


They Then Ate the Sailors

by coyotesuspect



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Chicago (City), M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:12:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotesuspect/pseuds/coyotesuspect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer before Sam leaves for Stanford, Sam and Dean sublet a student apartment in a heat-wave gripped Chicago. With John tied up with a case in Iowa City, Sam and Dean are left to figure what's behind a recent spate of drownings. Sam wrestles with the weight of the secret he's keeping from Dean, while Dean struggles with his feelings for Sam. Things come to a head when a young girl goes missing and Sam nearly drowns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Then Ate the Sailors

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Supernatural/J2 Big Bang Fanfiction and Fanart challenge. All the words are by me, coyotesuspect. And the illustrations are by the talented and lovely .
> 
> Thank you so much to and for the wonderful, thoughtful betas. And thank you as well to my fabulous artist who produced several pieces of beautiful art on a very fast turn-around. Thank you also to for the cheerleading, as well as to everyone on twitter who was supportive while I fretted over writing this. Fretting aside, I had a great time, and a final, huge thank you to the mods for running this exchange year after year. It's been a blast.

Sam hears sirens.

He always hears sirens in the city, the long, vicious shriek of them on some not-too-distant street. He and Dean are staying near a fire station, so sometimes the sirens are particularly loud, a swelling ring that fills the apartment with tangible sound, until it breaks apart and howls to whatever corner of the city that's summoned it.

The sirens and the heat make it hard to sleep some nights. 

They're in Chicago, subletting a student apartment for the summer on the cheap, and living on the third and final floor of a rose-bricked building built sometime in the 1920s. John's gone more often than not, using Chicago as a base to strike out for the wider Midwest. Sam guesses this is John's plan for the rest of their lives, dumping him and Dean somewhere, and taking them on hunts when he needs an extra man. 

Sam gets out of bed after the third siren in the hour and wanders out into the living room. The walls are bare. The real tenants took everything down for the summer, and Sam's not sure if it was out of politeness, or if they just didn't trust Dean and him not to strip the place. At least they left their furniture: a purple futon that looks like it's had as many owners as the apartment's had tenants and a rickety wooden dining set that must have been built inside the apartment; the table's too big to actually be able to get through the door. 

In the kitchen, he can hear someone talking out on the fire escape. The people in the apartment next to them are all actual students, as near as Sam can tell, and they fall somewhere between his age and Dean's. They stay up late some nights, drinking and singing and talking loudly about internships and summer classes and gossip. Sam likes it, even when it interferes with his sleep; it gives him a sense and shape of what's to come. 

He pauses as he opens the fridge to grab the milk. One of the voices has separated itself from the rest, and it's clearly Dean talking. He closes the fridge quietly, half-gallon of milk hanging limply in his hand. 

"Yeah," Dean's saying, voice loud and bright with charm and alcohol. "I fucking loved calculus." A girl laughs in response.

Sam stands in the kitchen for a while, listening to them talk. He feels vaguely annoyed that Dean didn't ask him along. He's old enough to go to a college party; hell, he's actually going to college come fall, even if Dean doesn't know that yet. But at the same time, he and Dean haven't figured out yet if they're acting like they're brothers, or friends, or just two students tossed together in the search for summer housing. 

He leans against the counter and drinks straight from the carton in petulant revenge. Eventually, it's just Dean and a girl talking, and then it's not talking, but soft, wet noises, the girl making an occasional high, sweet sound that goes straight through Sam. 

The sounds stop for a moment, and there's a quiet murmur of conversation Sam can't quite parse, then Dean's voice more clearly says, "Yeah, my roommate's asleep." 

Sam swears and quickly puts the milk away, then darts to his room. He closes his door just in time to hear Dean shoulder open the heavy backdoor between the kitchen and the fire escape. 

He hears the girl giggling, and Dean's low, rumbling laugh in response. Then he hears the sound of more kissing. Sam’s bedroom is right next to the kitchen, and his bed is pressed right up against the shared wall. Sam wonders where his CD player is and curses when he remembers he left it on the dining table. 

He closes his eyes and pulls his pillow over his face. It won't be the first time he's overheard Dean having sex. And pretty soon, he reminds himself, he won't ever have to hear it again. He clings to that bright thought as Dean and the girl stumble into the living room. Dean sleeps on the futon most nights; Sam's done a better job at claiming the bedroom. The couple of nights that John was in Chicago, Sam ended up with Dean on the futon. It wasn't nearly big enough for the two of them. He'd woken up in the middle of the night with Dean's knees lodged against his kidneys and sweat pouring down his back from the added heat, his body uncomfortably aware of another person so close to him. 

He'd ended up grabbing his bed roll and camping out on the fire escape and woken up just past dawn with five mosquito bites. 

Sam scratches at one of the bites, not quite healed, and concentrates on the itch, trying to mentally drown out the noises from the next room. There is the unmistakable metal creak of Dean pulling the futon out flat, and it’s followed by the even more unmistakable sounds of more making out. Sam presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. He could get up, he thinks, make it obvious he _isn't_ asleep, _thanks for assuming, Dean_. But he isn't sure Dean would care enough for that to work, and the more extreme option – actually walking into the living room like he doesn't know they’re there – might earn him an eyeful he has no desire for. 

He resigns himself to his fate just in time for the girl to let out a long moan, and Dean grunts low in response.

It’s kind of like listening to porn, Sam thinks, if he ignores the fact he’s really listening to his brother. 

The futon starts to squeak maniacally, in a sharp, hard rhythm, and Sam laughs at the absurdity, then quickly claps his hands over his mouth. He sits there on his bed for a long moment, hands over his mouth and shoulders shaking, as the futon goes _ping ping ping ping_. Sam kind of hopes it’ll collapse. 

Dean says something, too low for Sam to catch the words, but from the girl's answering moans, Sam figures it’s probably dirty talk. Sam curses at himself when he realizes he’s trying to figure out what Dean’s saying, and his face heats up. This is terrible. He’s invading her privacy. He picks up his book and retreats to the furthest corner of his room and opens the window there. City sounds fill the room – cars, laughter and conversation, a barking dog, and the fucking infernal sirens, but faint and warped from distance. Sam presses his hand against the window screen and thinks about popping it out. He could stick his head out. 

He can still hear the damn futon squeaking.

x

Sam gets four hours of sleep, instinctively waking up at seven, and goes for a run. He likes this time of day, likes watching the city wake up around him. People in business suits waiting at bus stops, other joggers like him, the street cleaner, and the mellow, hazy gold of a summer morning, the slow undimming of it all. He runs to the lake on 57th Street, just under a mile from the apartment. The water's silvery and calm, stretching out seemingly endless until it blues into the horizon. 

Sam particularly likes the lake. 

The apartment's quiet when he gets back in, Dean and the girl both gone from the futon, just a twisted-up sheet and Dean’s pillow left behind. Sam raids the fridge for food, finds three eggs, some butter, half an onion, and the milk he didn’t finish from last night. He takes everything but the onion, and grabs one of the three pans the actual tenants were kind enough to leave. He tries to compose a mental grocery list as he whisks the eggs: more milk, more eggs, maybe bread? Dean’s always been the one who figures this shit out, and Sam feels a bit guilty that he’s eighteen and has no idea how to fucking shop for himself. But he remembers seeing a sign for a weekend farmers’ market a few blocks away; maybe he can check that out. The summer’s shaping up to not be so bad, he thinks, allowing a tiny bit of happiness to creep in. Dad’s mostly ignoring him, and it’s nice, being in the city and near a college. It feels almost normal, and if Dean’s obnoxious sometimes, then at least it’s an obnoxiousness Sam’s used to. 

Someone comes out of the bathroom and makes a surprised noise, and Sam jumps a bit, nearly dropping his spatula. 

It’s a girl, with shiny dark hair and large dark eyes, the kind of eyes where the pupil blurs into the iris. She's long-limbed and pretty and looks a little bit embarrassed. After a beat, during which Sam just stares at her, he realizes she must be who Dean hooked up with last night.

"Oh," she says. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize anyone else was up." 

"It's, uh, it's fine," says Sam quickly. He can feel himself blushing. "You're, uh, do you know if Dean's awake?"

The girl nods and then shrugs. "He got a phone call and left this morning. And I, um, fell back asleep." 

"Oh," says Sam, feeling kind of stupid and left out. The phone call was probably from Dad. "He probably didn't say where he was going." 

"No," says the girl, leaning against the doorway. Her shirt slips down her right shoulder, and Sam can see the edge of her collarbone, the fine point it makes at the end. He looks back to his eggs, which are almost done, and slides the heat a little lower. "So is he really a student?" 

"Who? Dean? Yeah. Why do you ask?"

She shrugs. "I don't know. He doesn't act like the other guys here. He's more... self-assured." 

Sam, who's heard enough girls coo over his brother to last him this lifetime and the next, makes a face. "You mean he's kind of a douchebag." 

She laughs. "Kind of early in the summer for roommate trouble." 

"Nah," says Sam, sliding his eggs off the frying pan and onto a plate. "We're okay. It's not like either of us have anywhere else to go." 

"How fatalistic," says the girl. She bends down and slips her sandals on. Her long dark hair falls across her face. "I'm Eleni, by the way." 

"Sam." He glances back at her. "It's good to meet you." 

"Same," says Eleni, heading towards the door that leads to the stairwell. "I'm sure I'll see you around, since I live right there." She jerks her thumb towards the neighboring apartment. "Have a good day, Sam."

"You too!" he calls out, just before she slips out, and then he leans against the counter, holding his plate of eggs and feeling kind of empty. Of course one of the only times he's capable of holding a conversation with a girl, she's one of Dean's hook ups. 

x

Dean shows up an hour later, with a holler and a bang of the door. 

"Sammy!" he yells. "Get out here!"

Sam ignores him. He's sitting out on the fire escape, one of Dean's beers near his knee and _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_ in his lap. It's the hottest part of the day, and they have no air conditioning. Sam’s sweating just from sitting, and he can feel the sweat trickling down his neck to pool in the divot of his collarbones. His whole body feels a bit slick. He dunked his shirt in ice water and wrapped it around his head about forty minutes ago, and he's thinking he'll have to do it again soon. But that's going to have to wait for now. Czech existentialism will beat out Dean's blustering any day.

"Sammy!" yells Dean again. Sam can hear Dean roving around the apartment, looking for him, and finally the door behind Sam clicks open. Dean jerks the shirt off of Sam's head and says, "The hell are you doing out here for?"

Sam tilts his head up and glares up at Dean. "It's cooler out here than inside." 

He doesn't understand how Dean manages it. It's close to a 100 degrees, and Dean's still wearing jeans. Jeans, and a black t-shirt that clings. Sam looks pointedly back at his book. 

Dean flicks his ear. "Fair enough. But, dude, we have a case." 

“Huh,” says Sam flatly. He turns a page of his book.

Dean snorts. “Don’t look so excited, Sammy.”

He pulls out a folded article from his pocket and hands it to Sam, who takes it grudgingly. It’s from the Tribune and about a young man who drowned off a north side beach two nights ago. It’s a short article, mainly just facts, and a quick quote from the victim’s mother.

“So someone got drunk and went night-swimming,” says Sam skeptically. “Is this what Dad called you about?”

“Dumbass,” says Dean, taking the article back. “That’s the third drowning on that stretch of the lake this month. All dudes.” He pauses. “And how’d you know Dad called?”

Sam shrugs and turns down a corner of the page to mark his place. He stands up slowly, and feels Dean’s eyes on him as he does so. “I ran into your, uh, _date_ this morning. She said someone called and you left. Who the hell else could get you out of bed with a phone call?” 

Dean huffs. “Well, Dad says he’s stuck in Iowa City for the foreseeable future, so he wants us to handle this one.”

“Just what I wanted,” snipes Sam. “Homework over the summer.”

“Don’t be a brat, Sammy,” snaps Dean right back. “This isn’t homework. It’s our _job_.” 

“I didn’t interview for it,” says Sam. He tucks his book under his arm and then grabs his shirt and beer and heads inside. “But whatever. So guys are drowning. What’s Dad think it is?” 

"If Dad knew, do you think he'd've given us the case?" says Dean, rolling his eyes. He thwacks Sam on the shoulder. "Put on a shirt, dude. We're going." 

Sam heads into his room to grab a shirt and leaves the door open so he can talk to Dean. 

"Wasn't that what you were doing this morning?" he calls. He finds a mostly clean shirt stuffed under his bed. 

"I was interviewing a grieving family member," says Dean. "Since you still look all of fucking sixteen, I didn't think you'd make a convincing insurance adjuster." He's leaning in the doorway, and Sam can feel his eyes on him as he pulls on the shirt. He makes a face. It feels like Dean's been watching him a lot lately, and it makes something hot clench low in his gut. He thinks maybe Dean knows, or at least suspects, and he's just waiting for Sam to slip up and admit he's leaving. 

"They have anything worthwhile?" he asks, uneasy. He glances at Dean, and Dean's eyes cut away. 

"Kind of," says Dean with a shrug as Sam grabs his shoes. "Said the vic'd been acting weird lately, spending a lot of time at the lake like he was looking for something. Looking off into the distance." 

"Huh," says Sam. He follows Dean out the room and grabs his book as they head out of the apartment. "Could be anything then." He pauses. "Could be a suicide. Those can act like epidemics sometimes." 

"You mean sometimes civilians come up with bullshit theories to explain supernatural phenomenon."

"It's _phenomena_ , Dean," says Sam automatically. He smiles smugly and gets rewarded with another thwack to the shoulder, but harder this time. 

" _Nerd_ ," sneers Dean. “And it’s not suicides. What the papers aren’t saying, because the cops haven’t told them, is that something’s been _chewing_ on the floaters.” 

Dean relates the last bit with morbid relish.

Sam wrinkles his nose. “Fish?” 

Dean shakes his head. “I don’t think any fish in Lake Michigan are gonna gnaw someone’s face off that quickly.” 

“Their _faces_ were chewed off?” 

Dean nods, clearly delighting in grossing Sam out. “I hear the cheeks are the most succulent part of the body.”

“Jesus Christ. You’re _disgusting_.”

x

Dad's got the car, so they take the bus to the red line, and then the red line north. Dean bobs his head his head to his Walkman, mouthing the words to whatever it is he’s listening to. He should look like a total jackass, but he doesn’t, he looks _cool_. Even in the tightly packed seats of the El, he manages to sprawl his legs out, and his arm lies along the length of the seat, fingers coming to rest slightly curled near Sam’s ear. 

Sam scowls at Dean’s fingers; Dean’s tendency to herd Sam into the inside seat is obnoxious. And while it means Sam gets the window seat and the view, the window shit means shit when all the stops between Chinatown and Fullerton are below ground. The train rattles and roars through the dark tunnels, and all Sam sees when he looks at the window is his own peevish expression, Dean’s Roman coin profile bright behind him. It’s just like Dean to act like Dad passing on a B-team hunt to them is like winning the lotto. 

Sam tries to read but keeps getting distracted, his thoughts drifting away and refusing to settle, and Dean’s a constant distraction at his side. He thinks, suddenly, of Eleni from this morning, and wonders if he’ll see her again. It’s a stupid thought; she’s into Dean. And, says a voice inside his head that sounds jarringly like Dean, _it’s not like you’d know what to do with her if she were interested_. 

Which makes him think of what he heard the night before. It’s not the first time he’s heard Dean having sex or jerking off. Close quarters and growing up together mean those noises have been an occasional, if never comfortable, fact. He knows Dean’s heard him jerking off, too; Dean’s not shy about smirking at Sam about it and asking, _”So what was she this time, Sammy? Cheerleader? Another drama nerd? A dude?”_

Sam, for his part, makes a big fucking deal about it whenever he feels like Dean’s gotten a little too comfortable getting off within earshot of Sam. It may be an inescapable reality, but it doesn’t mean it’s _normal_. And Sam sure as hell isn’t going to act like it is. 

Dean’s knee nudges into Sam’s leg as the train surfaces into the light. Sam turns red all over.

All told, it takes over an hour to get to the right beach; the city’s so spread out. But it’s a short walk from the station to the beach, and signs hang everywhere proclaiming Bryn Mawr a “historic district.” Even on a weekday, there are plenty of people wandering about, families with kids in strollers and couples holding hands and packs of teens talking in loud voices.

The beach itself isn’t very beachlike. It’s rocky for a good quarter of a mile, and the drop down to the lake is sharp. You could swim here, if you really wanted to, but it would be hard getting back up. There’s some tattered police tape in the vicinity, but Sam gets the impression everyone’s satisfied with the official explanation – suicides or drunks. 

He sighs. Everyone except them. Always them.

At least it’s a little cooler by the lake. 

He automatically takes a different end of the beach than Dean, and they work towards each other, carefully scanning the ground and nearby water for anything that looks out of place. Despite his irritation, Sam finds the work soothing. He doesn’t have to think particularly hard to do this, ingrained into him as it is. 

But he doesn’t find anything, and neither has Dean by the time he reaches him. 

“So I guess we should go talk to the locals,” says Sam dryly, after a moment of them both staring out at the lake. It’s a peaceful, shimmering turquoise color and big enough that it might as well be an ocean. Off in the distance, Sam can see a white sailboat drift gently. It’s hard to think three people died right here, just recently. 

“Yeah,” says Dean. “See if anyone’s noticed anything.” He glances at Sam. “We’ll have more luck if we split up.” 

Sam nods and feels his chest swell a tiny bit, pleased in spite of himself that Dean trusts him. 

And then Dean ruins it by handing him a twenty. 

“And grab yourself something to eat, too.” 

“I’ve got cash,” says Sam sharply, and, sure, every dime he’s got should really go towards his ‘getting to California’ fund, but he can afford a couple bucks to grab a hot dog and schmooze the locals. He doesn’t need Dean to patronize him. 

Dean raises his eyebrows, but he puts the bill away.

“Well, fiiine,” he drawls, rolling his eyes dramatically. “S’fucking ungrateful of you Sammy.” 

“Uh-huh,” says Sam. He flaps his hand at Dean, and then, before Dean can say anything else, darts away. 

He goes west for a couple blocks, and then drops south, wanting to stay parallel to the lake. They went too early in the day, he thinks. If they’d come at night, Dean could’ve hit up the bars for information, and Sam could’ve staked out the lake. People are a hell of a lot less likely to talk about suspicious suicides in the broad, damning light of day. 

He strikes out on his first try, when he ducks into a used bookstore. It’s slightly muggy, but mostly cool. The store is a pleasantly dim, crouched over place. A lot of people would probably find it claustrophobic, but it’s homey to Sam, and he lets himself drift through the shelves for a while before finally coming to the front register, with a 50 cent, falling apart copy of _Tramps Abroad_ in his hand. 

“I’m not sure I want to go back out there,” he jokes to the cashier. “It’s too hot.”

The cashier laughs; he’s a pot-bellied man with a ponytail, and Sam pegs him for the owner as well.

“You’ll be singing a different tune in January,” he says, ringing up the book. “You’ll miss the heat then.”

Sam does his best rueful smile. “Maybe not. I’m only here for the summer.” 

“Oh yeah? What are you in our fair city for?”

Sam shrugs. “Internship.” He pauses as he watches the man bag the book, and then adds curiously. “Are there always this many drownings?”

The man frowns. “You mean the couple near here?” He shrugs. “Can’t really say. Sometimes these things just happen.”

“Yeah?” says Sam, taking his book and change. “So you think it’s just a coincidence?”

The cashier gives him a look that Sam’s learned means, _Who the hell is this weirdo?_

Sam smiles broadly. “Sorry, I know it’s morbid. It just seems strange.” He nods and adds brightly, “Thanks for the book! Have a good day.” 

The cashier echoes him dubiously as Sam goes back into the street. 

He slumps, for just a second, once he’s outside, and then he makes himself keep going. This isn’t what he wants to be doing, but it’s what he’s doing now. So he might as well be good at it. 

“Spare a dollar?” asks a thin man on the corner as Sam goes to cross the street. 

Sam shakes his head and mutters a quick, “Sorry,” turning red. The homeless are his least favorite thing about the city, the way no one seems to care and everyone just adopts a strategy of pretending they don’t exist. It’s a strategy Sam’s started to fall into, too, and he hates how the city does that to you. 

_See_? he says to the imaginary John that lives in his head, the one that is, ultimately, reasonable. There’s just as much good to do in this world that isn’t _killing monsters_.

Then a thought occurs to him, and he turns around in the middle of the street. 

He dumps half of his change into the panhandler’s cup, and the panhandler, if he’s surprised by Sam’s change of heart, doesn’t show it. He smiles graciously. 

“Thanks, man! You have a great day!” 

“No problem,” mumbles Sam, a little awkwardly. He lingers, and the man’s smile turns a bit stiff around the edges. 

“Uh,” says Sam, very aware of the way he looms over the man. Should he sit? Dean would probably sit next to him. 

Sam stays standing, and adds lamely. “Do you know anything about the drownings?” 

The man looks confused. “Sorry?” 

“The three men who drowned recently,” says Sam. “Like, that’s kind of weird right? Three young guys, not connected, all drowning at the same stretch of beach in a week?” 

“Yeah,” says the man, a bit warily, and Sam blinks with the realization that as much as it unnerves him to have panhandlers talk to him, being on the other hand makes you even more defenseless against other people. 

He takes a step back and gives the man a little more space. “I was just wondering if you had any thoughts.” 

“You’re pretty young for a detective.” 

Sam worries at his lip with his teeth, and then lets his shoulders slump and his eyes drop. 

“One of the guys who drowned was my cousin,” he says quietly, and then he adds firmly. “But he wouldn’t have killed himself, and he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to go drinking and swim.” 

The man hesitates, and then says, playing with the rim of his cup. “Drowning’s started right after the singing.”

“The singing?” 

The man nods, and then hums a few bars of a song. He has a soft, resonant voice, and the song is something sweet and lilting and sad. It makes Sam tip in a bit to listen to it.

“Something like that,” says the man, breaking off. “Sorry about your cousin, man.”

Sam blinks at him. “No words?” he asks, finally. 

“Maybe. Wasn’t English.”

“Why do you think they’re connected?” Sam asks. “The men who drowned and the singing.” 

“Like I said, started around the same time.” The man pauses. “And it always sounds like the singing’s coming from near the lake.” 

“You ever go see who was singing?”

“Nah,” says the man, shaking his head. “Gives me the heebie jeebies.”

“All right.” Sam takes the rest of the money out of his wallet and adds it to the man’s cup. “Thank you,” he adds sincerely. “You’ve been really helpful.”

  


\-----

“There have been cases of ghosts singing,” says Sam, cramming a slice of pizza into his mouth. He’s perked up since getting their only clue, and Dean feels the low, constant tension in his stomach unwind a bit.

Dean scribbles down ‘singing ghost’ into the cheap spiral bound notebook he grabbed on their way back from the lake. It seems small and, if he’s being honest, a bit stupid, the generic off-brand version of Dad’s journal. 

“What else?” asks Dean.

“We could call Dad and ask him,” points out Sam. “He’s the one with the _real_ journal.” He sniffs derisively at Dean’s spiral bound. 

Dean throws a wadded up napkin at Sam. 

“Dad doesn’t need us to bother him,” he says. Dad has other things to worry about, and Dean figures it’s about time he and Sam prove their mettle, that they don’t need Dad or anyone to walk them through a case. 

Sam swats the napkin away and rolls his eyes. “What about Pastor Jim? Or Caleb?” He pauses and then adds, “Or Bobby.” 

“We’re not talking to Bobby right now,” says Dean evenly. He underlines singing twice. 

“ _Dad’s_ not talking to Bobby right now,” huffs Sam. “Doesn’t mean we can’t.”

“You been talking to Bobby?”

Sam shrugs and shifts uncomfortably. They’ve been sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, pizza and a few beers spread between them and the door to the fire escape propped open to catch the breeze as the sky goes slowly purple.

It’s been nice. 

“So that’s the big secret you’ve been hiding,” Dean snorts. This isn’t something worth arguing about; it’s not like he hasn’t snuck the occasional call to Bobby either.

“I haven’t been _keeping a secret_!” says Sam quickly, his voice pitching high halfway through the sentence. 

Dean pauses, his grip tightening momentarily on his pen. He looks right at Sam. Now _that’s_ suspicious. 

“You always been a shit liar,” he says softly. 

Sam stares back at him, his jaw pushed out and his expression tight, stubborn. 

“Mermaids,” says Sam. 

“Mermaids?” repeats Dean blankly.

“Mermaids,” says Sam, nodding forcefully. “They sing, too, sometimes.”

“You think there are mermaids in Lake Michigan,” says Dean, slightly disdainful. He feels prickly now, annoyed that Sam changed the subject, annoyed that Sam’s fucking _keeping secrets_.

Sam’s eyes flash. “I didn’t say I think there are mermaids in Lake Michigan. I said they _sing_.” 

“Yeah, they also don’t fucking exist-”

“Everything else fucking exists Dean-”

“Dad’s never seen one.”

“Oh, yeah, cuz Dad knows fucking _everything_ , doesn’t he, Dean?”

“He knows a helluva lot fucking more than _you_ do!”

They’re both on their feet, and Sam shoves first, quicker and quicker to anger these days. Dean grabs his wrists and, by the look of Sam’s wide eyes, responds way more forcefully than expected. He twists his brother around, keeping a grip on his wrists, and shoves him hard against the counter. 

“Jesus!” yelps Sam. “Fucking Christ! _Dean_!”

Dean puts his weight against Sam for a second, just for a second, and feels the long line of Sam’s body against him. Sam curses and jams his heel against Dean’s toes, but Dean’s still got his boots on, and he barely feels it. 

He lets go, takes a step back. 

Sam turns slowly, eyes wide. He’s panting slightly, probably more out of surprise than exertion. Dean looks at his mouth. 

“Sorry,” says Dean, swallowing hard. Hot shame floods over him, not at losing his temper, not exactly. Sam’s a little shit and deserved that, but something else. Something Dean’s been treading around the edges of for almost a year now, not letting himself look at it directly. “Must’ve been the heat.” 

“Yeah,” says Sam carefully. He rubs his wrists “Same.” 

They knocked over one of the beers in the scramble, and Sam steps over the spill and the pizza to grab the paper towels and clean up. Dean watches him, watches the way his shoulders move and how his hair falls across his face. 

“I’m going for a walk,” he says finally. “Try to think of more ideas that don’t wanna be part of our world.” 

“Fuck you,” says Sam. But there’s no heat to it, and he looks relieved as Dean steps out. 

x

Dean knows it’s a mistake as soon as he steps outside. He hates walking; he hates walking in the _heat_ , which hangs limp and muggy all around him. He thinks about going back into the apartment building and hitting up that Eleni chick, but it’s still early in the evening and she’d said something the night before about her roommates not liking when she brings guys back. And he’s sure as fuck not bringing back anyone to his place tonight. 

He lets himself think about Sam for a moment, laughing in the dimming light of their kitchen just a few moments ago. Times like that are rare these days and disappear as quickly as they come. He’s got no idea why. Something subtle but important shifted a few months ago. Dean’s been attributing it to Sam graduating, but if he’s being honest, Sam’s been weird for the better part of a year, really weird since around March. 

Maybe Bobby knows what’s up. Sam looked pretty panicked when Dean cottoned on that Sam had been calling him. He wonders if being so close to some stupid ivy-covered college is making things worse for Sam. Sam grabbed on hard to the idea of going to college sometime around his freshman year, and it wasn’t a dream he let die easy. 

Dean stops in front of the bar that says Woodlawn Tap but everyone calls Jimmy’s. Dean likes that, that even colleges with “like, eighty Nobel laureates, Dean” have dark, sticky pubs called Jimmy’s. 

He could use a few drinks. 

The bar’s cavelike and surprisingly large, the clientele a mixture of raggedly dressed students and regular folk, but no one seems interested in talking to a handsome stranger. So Dean half-watches the fourth inning of a White Sox game as he nurses his beer and thinks about the case. They’ve got young men drowning and possibly some singing. He mentally runs down the vics’ profiles again – all between 18 and 25, one working at a fast food place, one just living with his parents and thinking about enlisting in the Navy, and the third just laid off, trying to start his own business and failing at it. 

They could almost be him and Sam, Dean thinks uneasily. Same age, more or less. He stares into his drink. But that doesn’t sit quite right with him. There’s a connection he’s missing, one that doesn’t quite map onto him and Sam. 

He should ask Sam later, once they’ve both calmed down. Sam’s good at spotting patterns, thanks to that big genius head of his. 

“ _It’s just so sad,”_ one of the victim’s mothers had sobbed to him that morning. “He was so unhappy, and now he’s dead and it’s never going to get better.”

None of them seemed particularly happy. Sam could be right, could be suicides. 

But that doesn’t sit right either, and the melody Sam hummed for him rises up in his mind. Even Sam, who couldn’t hold a tune to save his fucking life, had made it sound haunting. 

They should go back tomorrow, he decides, and ask if any of the victims’ had said anything about singing. 

x

When he leaves the bar, it’s two hours later, and the sky’s gone storm-dark. The wind shoves and tugs as he walks slowly back to the apartment, and it sends trash and a few leaves tricking down the street. He spots a fork of lightning between two buildings, and even though the thunder takes a while to follow, with the way the wind is blowing, he knows the storm will be on top of him soon. 

He quickens his pace and makes it inside the apartment building just as the first few heavy drops start to fall. 

Sam’s spread out on the couch. And shirtless, again, a paperback splayed over his face. Dean flicks the light on – dumbass been reading in the dark – and watches his brother breathe for a moment. He feels nicely hazy, and lets himself have the small, secret pleasure of watching Sam’s chest move. Sam gives no indication he knows Dean’s there. Dean wonders if he’s sleeping. The sound of the rain hitting the windows makes the apartment seem small and intimate and calm.

“We should go see a game sometime,” he says loudly, just so Sam will have to respond to him. “I hear Sox tickets are pretty cheap.”

Sam pulls the book off his face and looks at him with an unreadable expression.

“Dad passing out fun money now?” Sam asks finally, his mouth twisting into something that could either be a sneer or a smile. It makes Dean’s skin itch sometimes; right before his eyes, his little brother’s turning into someone he barely understands.

“I got some cash of my own,” he says easily, leaning against the doorframe.

Sam snorts and follows the sound with a yawn and a graceful stretch. Dean watches the pull of Sam’s stomach muscles; his gut clenches. 

Sam’s not the only one Dean’s having trouble recognizing these days. 

“Sure,” says Sam finally, sitting up. He sets the book down on the coffee table and finds his shirt on the ground. Dean looks away while he puts it on.

“How was your walk?” asks Sam quietly, rubbing at his face. 

“Went to a bar. There’s one a couple blocks from here.”

Sam laughs, a bit cruelly. “Sounds about right.” 

He doesn’t say anything else, and Dean thinks maybe Sam is swinging for another fight. Or maybe Sam’s just always swinging for a fight these days. He’s kinda like a forest in high summer, one errant lightning bolt short of a wildfire.

He looks back at Sam, studying him for some clue. 

Sam slowly turns red. 

“How was the bar then?” Sam mutters, looking away.

“Fine,” says Dean. “Almost divey enough to feel like home.” He pauses, but Sam doesn’t react, and his moon-bright eyes peek at Dean from under long lashes. “I spent a lot of time thinking about the drownings, seeing if I could find a connection.” 

Sam sharpens a bit at that, body straightening up and leaning forward, chin perked up and eyes narrow. It’s a hungry look, and it makes Dean glad to see it. Sam wants to be here. He wants to be doing this, wants to be hunting with Dean and Dad, and all the bitching and whining is just for show. 

“Yeah,” says Dean, encouraged. “None of them seemed very happy, right?”

Sam looks skeptical. “Most people aren’t very happy, Dean,” he says, dashing Dean’s new hope as suddenly as it came.

Dean sneers at him. “Like I was saying, they were all unhappy and they were all… Treading water. They weren’t going anywhere.” 

“They were all losers,” says Sam, more bluntly, but his eyebrows have drawn together, indicating serious thought. 

“Being a little harsh there.” 

Sam gives him a heated look. “They weren’t stuck, they were just making excuses,” he says with enough force that Dean knows he’s not talking about the victims at all. Dean looks at him for a long moment, but Sam doesn’t turn red this time. He holds his ground. 

“You’re not stuck anywhere, Sam,” he says carefully. 

Sam takes a deep breath, and Dean braces himself for a tongue-lashing, but instead Sam pushes his shoulders back and leans forward a bit more. He’s pushed his hair off his face, and it makes his expression sharper, more intent. He looks, suddenly, like a bird of prey about to take flight, something wounded and cruel. 

“That’s right,” says Sam, voice hard. “I’m not.” 

Dean straightens up and clasps his hands in front of him. He’s not sure how to deal with this, not sure what Sam’s trying to tell him, but it makes him nervous and upset the same way Sam’s reaction over mentioning Bobby made Dean nervous and upset. 

“Well, jeez, Sammy.” Dean makes his tone light. “Save the speech for someone who cares.” 

Sam deflates with a huff and rolls his eyes. He picks his book back up and thumbs at it absently. 

“Whatever,” he mutters, turning his head to look out the window. “Wasn’t a fucking speech.” 

His words are almost lost in the sudden flash of lightning and boom of thunder. For a moment, the apartment’s nothing but light and sound, everything broken open white and loud. And then, immediately after, everything just as dark and just as silent. 

Sam sucks in a breath, and rain starts to pour down. It had been a soft patter on the roof all through their conversation, but it’s a full roar now, a noise like being near the sea. 

Sam jumps to his feet and bursts out of the living room, through the kitchen and out onto the fire escape. Dean stares after him for a second, and then follows. 

“What the hell are you –” but the words die in his mouth as he joins Sam on the escape. Just beyond the overhang, the world is drowning. 

There’s another flash of lightning, vaguely pinkish this time, and in the dizzy afterglow, Sam glances over at Dean, face cracked open in a smile. Dean reaches out and touches his waist lightly just as the thunder follows. The lightning comes quick and brutal, spidery strike after spidery strike, and sometimes no strikes at all, just flickers of strange pearly light, the clouds above an oily purple-black. They’ve been in their share of storms before – Dean vividly recalls a time three years ago, out on the Nebraska plains, rain pelting the car as they outran some ugly mass of greenish clouds, lightning paving their way. 

But there’s something different about this. There’s no Dad this time. It’s just Sam, teeth bared in an almost feral grin as he leans into Dean’s hand. The wind’s throwing Sam’s hair into his face, but his usual scowl’s been erased, and his face is lit up. Dean keeps looking at him, instead of the storm. 

“What are you looking at?” yells Sam, the wind snatching his words as soon as he says them. 

“A freak!” Dean yells back, good-naturedly. Sam huffs and elbows Dean in response, but he’s still smiling. 

Dean moves closer. The rain’s practically a curtain now, and it sprays upwards from where it hits the edge of the fire escape to splash the tips of Dean’s shoes. He takes a step back, and Sam moves with him. 

“How long are we gonna be out here?” he asks.

“You can go in,” says Sam, smirking. His eyes are peering beyond the fall of water, keen for more lighting strikes. 

Dean shrugs. “Freak,” he says again. His hand drifts up to the back of Sam’s neck. Sam’s curls tickle his palm. 

Sam shivers at the touch, and Dean can feel goose pimples rise on his skin. He gives Dean a small, strange look. 

The rain lets off slightly, just in time for a particularly incandescent strike, one that sends tattered bolts zigzagging across half the sky. The boom that follows is hollowing and Sam jumps like a girl at a scary movie. Dean’s ears are ringing.

“Scared of a little thunder, Sammy?” asks Dean, practically yelling. 

Sam turns his head up to scowl at him. And shit, they’re close together. Sam’s face is just inches from Dean’s. 

“Took me by surprise,” he says, and quickly follows it with, “And shut up.”

Dean laughs hoarsely. “By surprise? ‘Case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been thundering and lightning for a while now.” 

“Jerk!” laughs Sam. He lets go of Dean and his hand darts up Dean’s shirt. He pinches the skin just above Dean’s hip. 

“Bitch,” grins Dean. He grabs Sam’s wrist and holds it. Sam’s eyes are shining, and he looks happy and fierce. Dean feels dizzy, and the hot pulse in Sam’s wrist beats against his palm. He swallows hard, mouth suddenly dry. With the water almost a sheer wall around them, it’s like they’re the only ones in the world, like maybe if something happened between a lightning strike and the following thunder, it wouldn’t count.

The next thunderclap sets off a row of car alarms and Dean jerks away, letting go of Sam’s wrist. 

Sam stares at him for a second.

“I’m going inside,” he says. A quiet, moody look slips across his features, and Dean looks away. Whatever momentum he had, he’s lost it.

He doesn’t follow Sam inside, but stays out on the fire escape watching the rain and lightning until, after weeks of stifling in their un-air conditioned apartment, he starts to feel cold. 

Sam’s in his room when Dean finally goes back inside. Dean listens to his brother move around for a couple minutes as he sets up the futon for sleeping. Sam’s quiet, for the most part, and when he stops moving around, Dean figures he’s curled up in his bed, reading. 

The thunderstorm passes over not long after Dean finishes getting ready for bed. Right before he drifts off, he hears Sam hum. It takes him a moment to place the tune. It’s the ghost song, he realizes, and the blackness of sleep slips over him.

x

Hector Jimenez worked at a McDonald’s downtown and lived in Little Village with his sister. It’s a fucking pain and a half to get to Little Village from Hyde Park – one long bus ride followed by standing at a street corner for a good fifteen minutes followed by another long bus ride followed by a good ten minute walk, and this is why Dean hates cities. Even if Dad left them the car, Dean’d still have to pay for fucking parking. 

But he gets there, and he wanders down 26th Street for a while and admires the murals and the quinceañera dresses in the windows and thinks about buying a popsicle from the man pushing a cart of them down the street. 

Bianca Jimenez’s apartment is a few blocks away from the main drag of Little Village, and Dean presses the buzzer twice before someone opens the door.

“Miss Jimenez?” he asks. She’s a short woman in her mid-twenties, with thick eyeliner and a full mouth. Her eyes are pink from crying. 

“Yes. What do you want?” she asks, voice sharp. 

“I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about your brother,” he says. 

“Why? Who are you?” She looks him over, suspicious and clearly unimpressed. 

Dean slouches a bit and lets a slow, charming smile unfurl across his face. He tries to make it look rueful, and he thinks he must succeed, since the tense frown lines between Bianca’s eyes lessen slightly. 

“I’m helping investigate his death,” he says. “I just want to know if there’d been anything strange going on before his death. Is there a reason he was so far from where he lived?”

Bianca still doesn’t let him into the apartment, but her shoulders sag a bit and she sighs. It’s clear she just wants to get Dean off her doorstep. 

“He was in a band, and most of his band lived on the north side.” She laughs, small and sad. “It was terrible music, but it seemed to make him happy. I don’t know. He seemed happier the last couple days. I thought maybe he’d met a girl or something. He was peacocking.” She looks at him miserably. “He was a good kid. He kept out of trouble. I was hoping maybe he’d go back to school soon.”

“A girl?” says Dean. 

Bianca gives him a dry look. “You know how boys get when they meet someone. Putting more gel in his hair, making sure his shirts were clean.”

“He say anything about this girl though?”

Bianca looks suspicious again. “No,” she says. “Like I said, it was just a guess. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Dean bows his head slightly. “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me,” he says. “I’m sorry about your loss. Just one more question – did your brother mention anything about singing?”

Bianca scowls at him. “He was in a band. Music was half of everything he talked about.” 

She shuts the door. 

Dean sighs and walks away. He buys a taco from a small taqueria as he walks back to the bus stop and ponders what Bianca said. The band he didn’t know about. He wonders if he’ll be able to track down any of Hector’s band-mates, see if they have anything to say. 

When he gets on the bus, he finds a copy of one of the free dailies left on his seat. He picks it up and feels suddenly sick. There’s a blown up picture of a smiling, preteen girl on the cover. She’s wearing a bathing suit and posing heroically in front of the lake, her hands on her hips. 

“Fourth Drowning in Summer Shocks Chicago” reads the bold red font above the picture. 

Dean reads the article, heart in his mouth. 

She drowned last afternoon, just hours before the storm hit. She was twelve years old.

\-----

Sam sneaks into the university library the morning after the thunderstorm. Dean’s long gone, off to find more family members of victims.

The clerk nods him through when he earnestly explains that he’s a prospective student and wants a look around. It’s not the first college library he’s lied his way into, but this feels more exciting, somehow. Because he knows he’ll actually be on a college campus in a few months’ time, with his own campus ID, and an undeniable right to be in the library. He’ll belong. 

Or at least that’s the hope; he wakes up nauseated and panicked most nights, victim of a vivid dream that Stanford’s rescinded their offer of admission. Terribly sorry, but there’s been some mistake and how could he have ever thought Stanford would take a kid like him? It gets bad, at night, the suffocating feeling that he’s going to be stuck in this life, shitty motel followed by shitty apartment followed by shitty trailer, rinse and repeat, the terrible fear the only way he’ll ever really be free is if Dad and Dean die before him. 

In the bright, broad light of day he knows it’s silly, that he has the letter of acceptance and the scholarship information and a half-dozen glossy brochures, each an object of reverence, tucked away in a shoebox, forwarded to him on the sly by Bobby. He has his golden ticket. 

Sam tries not to think too much about what it says about him that most of his nightmares are about not going to college rather than the real nightmare-fuel that makes up his waking life. 

Hopefully the library at Stanford is a little less monstrous than the one at the University of Chicago. The Regenstein is a prime example of a style of architecture called brutalism, and Sam is pretty sure it’s the kind of architecture you find in Hell. 

It’s also nine stories filled with books, and after spending an hour just wandering through the stacks, he gets lost for another fifteen when he actually tries to find the books he came for. The spaces between the shelves are narrow and often dimly lit. Sam’s never felt _overpowered_ by books before, but he feels it now. 

He wallows in the existential dread for only a moment, and then finally finds the shelf full of sea folklore he was looking for. 

After he collects a stack of books, he digs into old newspaper records. It’s dismal work, but he’s practiced enough to do it relatively quickly. He narrows his focus to papers from Chicago and other towns along Lake Michigan, focuses on the summer months. When he’s got a large enough stack to work with, he finds a small, two-person table wedged behind some shelves. 

He sits there, feeling surprisingly at peace with himself amidst the books and dust and occasional drifting student. 

Two hours later, he finds something. The front page of the July 27, 1981 edition of the _Milwaukee Journal Sentinel_ blares the headline: “SERIAL KILLER? LAKESIDE MURDERS TERRORIZE CITY.” 

Sam reads the article. Three men, all unconnected, had all gone missing, only for their bodies to show up on shore a few days later, looking mauled. 

He goes back, finds more back-copies of the Sentinel, and flips through the next two months of articles. There are three more similar deaths, all young men again.

The killer was never found. 

Exactly twenty years ago, thinks Sam. He gets up, finds editions of several papers from the summer of 1967, and, after another hour, finds an article on a series of drownings in a Michigan resort town. Young men, supposedly in the water long enough for the fish to start chewing on them.

He sits back. So they have a cycle, and they have an MO. That should be enough to figure out _what_ the killer is. He puts the papers away, and starts in on the books. 

Twenty minutes later, someone touches his shoulder. 

“Hey! It’s Sam, right?”

Sam looks up from his pile of books and immediately blushes. 

“Uh, hey, yeah. It’s, uh, Eleni, right?” 

Eleni beams at him. “Yeah. Hey. How are you?” 

“Good! I’m…” Sam looks down at his pile of books. He probably looks suspicious. “Good. What about you?”

“Do you mind if I join you?” asks Eleni, already putting her bag on the table across from Sam. 

“Yeah! That’s fine!” bleats Sam. He hastily pulls his books towards himself and stacks them into a neat pile. Eleni looks at them curiously. 

“What are you working on?” she asks. 

“Just, uh, I don’t know. A project.” Sam winces. Dean wouldn’t be this bad at this. 

She laughs. “So are you taking summer classes? What class is it for?”

“No, I mean. Yes. Yes, I’m taking summer classes. But this isn’t for a summer class.” 

Sam turns red, and Eleni laughs again. 

“I’m writing a short story,” he stammers out.

Eleni’s eyes widen. “Oh, how cool! What’s it about?”

“Uh,” says Sam.

Eleni flashes him a quick smile. “Or should I not ask?” 

“Probably not,” says Sam. He manages to laugh, though it comes out a bit rueful. “I get kind of embarrassed talking about it.” 

Eleni gives him a bland, innocent look. “You? Embarrassed? I never would’ve guessed.”

Sam turns even redder, and Eleni touches his wrist and laughs sweetly. She laughs a lot, Sam’s beginning to notice. 

Sam huffs. “Well what are you working on?” he asks.

“Research for my BA,” she says mournfully. She starts pulling books from her bag and ends up with an even larger stack than Sam’s. 

He’s impressed. 

“Your BA?” 

She narrows her eyes at him. “My BA thesis. It’s a requirement for honors in history.”

“Ah,” says Sam, trying to sound knowledgeable. “What are you writing on?”

Eleni bites her lip. “Well, that’s the thing that needs to be hammered out. I’ve got, you know, _vague_ ideas.”

Sam’s mouth quirks into a small smile. “Or should I not ask about it?”

She snorts. “Very funny,” and then she looks at him piercingly. “What year are you, Sam?” 

“I’m, er, a freshman.” 

“You mean a first-year?”

“Uh. Yes?” Sam wonders if all colleges are like this, with their own idioms. No wonder Eleni hadn’t thought Dean was a student here. 

He wonders what Stanford’s idioms are like.

Eleni leans back in her chair, eyebrows high. “Oh, so you’re one of those weird kids in that program who take classes on campus _before_ their first year even starts.”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Sam quickly, relieved she’s given him a good backstory. “Exactly. And we’re not weird. Just… excited.” 

Stanford has a similar program, for freshmen who want extra time to adjust to the college experience. Sam thinks of it longingly. He wanted to apply for it, but panicked at the last moment. He wasn’t ready then to tell Dad and Dean he was going.

“Sure,” says Eleni, amused. She sighs. “God, that means you’re just a baby though.” 

“I’m eighteen!” protests Sam. 

Eleni shudders exaggeratedly, opening up her first book. “A _baby_ ,” she protests, leaning across the table. “But since I’m such a nice person, I’m going to tell you all the best places in Hyde Park.” 

“Not the rest of Chicago?” says Sam, smiling. 

“That’s too subjective,” says Eleni. She steals a piece of his notebook paper and starts jotting down a list in a neat, loopy hand. “But there’s not that much to do in Hyde Park, so that’s pretty easy to agree on. First, you have to go the Point…”

Eleni continues in that vein for another few minutes, and then, as if they had mutually decided the conversation was over, she hands the notebook back to him and opens a book to read. 

Sam looks at her for a long moment, completely distracted from thoughts of nixies and water-ghosts and sea monsters. Eleni highlights something, brow furrowed thoughtfully. 

Sam shakes his head. “Thanks,” he mutters, but he’s still smiling. He goes back to his own work.

They sit there for a couple hours, content in each other’s company and their books, and Sam fills a sheaf of paper with notes and possibilities. 

Just before two, Eleni looks up. “What is that you’re humming?”

“What?” says Sam, dropping his pen. 

Eleni frowns at him. “You’ve been humming something for, like, the past minute.”

“I have?” says Sam, completely baffled. 

“Yes!” insists Eleni. “Did you really not notice?” 

Sam cringes. “No. What did it sound like?” 

Eleni raises her eyebrows. “I’m not very good at catching tunes, but something like…” She hums a few bars, and, with a chill, Sam realizes it’s the same song the homeless man hummed for him. It’s distorted a bit, but it’s definitely the same song.

“Oh, that,” says Sam. “It’s just something I heard the other day. I don’t know what it is.” 

“Do you mind… not humming it?” 

“Yeah, sure. Sorry. _Sorry_.” 

Eleni laughs and gives him a brilliant, Dean-like look. “You don’t have to be sorry, you just have to stop.” 

Sam blushes and makes a fumble at saying something, then gives up to go back to work. He can tell Eleni’s eyes are still on him though, and he hunches over his book more.

“Oh shit,” she says suddenly. “I have to get to work.” 

“Oh,” says Sam, blinking at her. “It was nice running into you.”

“Same,” says Eleni, jumping to her feet. She shoves the books back into her bag as quickly as she took them out, and Sam’s impressed by that, too. She has to be carrying at least fifteen pounds around with her. 

“Do you want to get dinner sometime?” she asks. 

Sam starts. “ _What_?”

Eleni’s face is a bit red, but her gaze is level. “I know you’re just a baby, but do you want to get dinner sometime? I’m free Friday night. We could grab something at the Med.”

“Uh! Yes! Definitely!” says Sam. He has no idea what the Med is. He hopes it’s on the list she gave him.

Eleni smiles. “Great. See you Friday, Sam. Get there early, around five, so we can get a table.” 

Sam stares after her as she walks away, and, elated, realizes she didn’t mention Dean the entire time. 

He stays at the library for another two hours, grabs a bagel and a coffee in the basement coffee shop and jots down notes about nixies and kelpies. When he finally leaves the library, the heat’s laying in the streets like a mangy dog. 

Halfway to the apartment, his phone rings. He picks up.

“There’s been another drowning,” says Dean, voice broken and raw. “A twelve-year-old girl.” 

x

“We don’t know it’s connected,” says Sam gently. Dean looks frantic. Stuff involving kids always makes Dean frantic. “She doesn’t fit the victim profile at all. Dean – I found a bunch of drownings from twenty and forty years ago, and it was always young men. This girl didn’t even drown in the same part of the city. Hell, Dean, there were other people around!” We shouldn’t feel guilty about this, he adds in his mind. _Dean_ shouldn’t feel guilty about this. 

Dean glares at him. His hair is sticking up and his face is bloodless. “Still doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk to the mom.” 

“If you think it’ll help,” says Sam, aiming for mollifying. 

“I do think it’ll fucking help,” snaps Dean. He glares harder, and Sam knows Dean’s not angry at him, he’s just angry period. But it’s still hard to just stand there and swallow it, not push back. “And where the fuck have you been all day?” 

“I was in the library,” says Sam, flushing hotly. “Researching? You’ve heard of it, right?”

Dean doesn’t notice the blush, or, if he does, he’s too distracted to mention it. 

“You learn anything useful?” he barks. 

“Yes!” snaps Sam. “I just fucking told you. Twenty years ago, this same shit happened in Milwaukee. And then it happened twenty years before that in Michigan. There’s a fucking pattern, and this girl doesn’t fit!” 

Dean stares at him, eyes blank in a way Sam associates with when he and Dad get into arguments, a look that means Dean’s shutting everything away, doing some terrible inward violence to himself. It makes Sam want to shake him, yell at him to stand up for himself, for Sam, when it counts. 

“We’ll talk about it later,” barks Dean and _that’s_ definitely a Dad tone of voice. 

“Why? So you can beat yourself up about something that’s got nothing to do with you?” 

Dean snorts and walks away. 

Sam stands there for a second, and then he follows, reluctantly and angrily. 

Dean walks hunched over and brooding the entire time. It’s a long walk, about sixteen blocks, but there’s no good bus route there. At least it’s a nice evening, thinks Sam, as they cross the block wide park that marks the end of the university’s physical sway and the true Chicago south side. 

Dean starts to talk, in a slow, clipped tone.

“They haven’t found the body, but she disappeared while swimming.” 

“I guess she’s a lot smaller than the guys that drowned,” says Sam, and immediately regrets it when Dean turns paler. He frowns, tries to think of a way to be useful. 

“Did anyone say anything about singing?” 

Dean’s silent for a moment. “No idea. What do you think we’re going to talk to the mother for?” 

“Right,” says Sam, irritation flashing again. “Because there’s no way I could be right about this having nothing to do with the deaths.”

Dean ignores him, keeps walking.

The girl’s mother lives in Woodlawn, in a grand stone house from the 1920s that got sliced into a duplex at some point. She answers the door on the third knock.

“What is it?” she says, her shoulders very straight. 

Sam glances at Dean. They didn’t rehearse a story along the way. Dean doesn’t look at him. He’s looking at the woman, his mouth tight with sympathy. 

“Ms. Washington?” asks Dean. “I’m Harrison and this is Peter. We were volunteers at Serena’s school. We heard what happened and we wanted to give our condolences.” 

She stares at them vacantly for a long moment, and then says, “Oh. That’s very kind of you.” 

Sam widens his eyes at her and furrows his brows. “We hope we’re not overstepping, but if there’s anything we can do for you, if you need to talk to anyone…” 

She turns her empty eyes to him. “That’s very kind of you,” she repeats. 

Sam looks at Dean again. Dean’s shoulders are bowed suddenly, like he’s carrying something heavy, and Sam wonders what it was Dean was up to the rest of the day. 

“Like we said,” Dean says, “our condolences.”

He turns and starts walking away, and it takes Sam a second to follow him, wondering why the fuck they came down here if they were just going to walk away. 

And then Ms. Washington says, “Would you boys like some pie? I’ve got a lot of it right now.” 

Grief, thinks Sam, as Dean turns around, a faint smile on his face, makes people act in the oddest ways.

Alexandra Washington is a former soldier, and Sam sees a lot of Dad in her – in her posture, in the way she’s holding onto her grief like a stone. He and Dean sit on her couch. Dean’s lounged back into it, and his arm spreads out over the back. But Sam sits on the edge, hunched over with a plate of sweet potato pie balanced on his knee. He’s forgotten how much he hates this, how it makes his stomach roil to sit in house after grief-stricken house and listen to another personal tragedy.

It’s not that Sam’s unsympathetic; it’s just hard to carry the weight of all that human sadness. But Dean and John seem to find it empowering, somehow, the knowledge that even if they can’t cure the grief, they can avenge it. Sam’s had enough vengeance to last him his whole life, he thinks dourly, and he taps his fingers nervously against his leg. He still has the song stuck in his head, the same four or five eerie notes. He tries to shove the music aside, concentrate on what Ms. Washington is saying.

“I met Serena’s daddy in Fort Ord,” she tells them at Dean’s prompting. Her hands are spread out over a photograph of the three of them. Mr. Washington was a red-haired man with dark, wild eyes. Serena looks all of five, which means it was taken years ago. She has her mother’s dark skin but her father’s freckles.

“He disappeared three years ago.” She breathes in sharply, and there’s a sobbing hitch at the end of the breath, but Sam catches the word – disappeared, instead of died or left. 

Dean reaches over and touches Ms. Washington’s hand, his face sorrowful and kind. He holds her hand. Sam looks away. It feels shameful, somehow, to watch this woman’s control disintegrate. It’s the only thing she has left. 

She breathes in deep and exhales in a long shudder, her shoulders shaking. Sam puts the plate of pie down on the side table and gets up. 

“Hey,” he says, touching her shoulders lightly. He can’t say it will be all right, so he just says, “Hey,” again. 

Ms. Washington starts to cry, and Sam shoots Dean a terrified look, who just shrugs at him, wide-eyed. 

Sam bites his lip, and he crouches down and hugs her gently. She gasps and presses her face into his shoulder, and Sam can’t even begin to understand what it’s like to have a grief this vast, his mother’s death an absence rather than a loss. He pats her back awkwardly. 

They sit there for a long moment, Sam letting the woman sob into his shirt and Dean sitting there, red-faced. 

“Mama?” says a small, bewildered voice.

All three of them turn quickly, and there, standing in the doorway and dripping wet, is Serena Washington. 

x

“She’s a kid,” says Sam, as soon as they’re back outside. “There’s no way she’s the one who killed all those guys.” 

“There’s still something weird going on,” says Dean. He looks torn, and Sam gets it, he does. A miracle is rarely a miracle, but he doesn’t want to think a little girl is a monster either. 

“Well _yeah_. But she’s not responsible for the deaths.” 

Dean glares at him for a long moment and then he sags a bit. 

“You think that because of those articles you read?” 

Sam brightens. “Yeah! Yes! We need to look into Serena, but I don’t think she’s really connected. Besides, Dean, her mom seemed to really believe she was dead, right? I don’t think she’d think her daughter had drowned if her daughter were some kind of water-monster.” 

Dean nods along, and Sam can tell he’s mostly convinced him. Hell, he’s mostly convinced himself. 

“What about her dad?” asks Dean.

“The dead one?” But even as Sam says it, he remembers Ms. Washington’s word choice – disappeared, not dead.

Dean sneers at him. “No the living one, dumbass. Could be a ghost.” 

“It doesn’t fit the cycle,” says Sam. “He didn’t disappear in ’81 or ’61.”

“Yeah, but he could still be a ghost, right? Just had second thoughts about drowning his kid.”

“Sure, maybe. We can come back tomorrow and try to talk to her. But Serena’s mom didn’t even say he was really dead, just disappeared.”

Dean stands still for a moment and then he nods decisively. 

“Sounds good. We’ll have to do more research, too. Don’t piss yourself. I know you’re excited.” 

Sam makes a face at him. “Haha, Dean.” 

Dean smirks at him and starts walking, a big, cocky walk that means Dean’s feeling back on top. 

“You really think they’re a coincidence? Serena coming back and these guys dying.” 

“It’s a big city,” says Sam. “Stranger things have happened. Also, our only witness said it was a _woman_ singing.” 

Dean nods again, expression happy and expansive in a way that makes Sam’s stomach hurt. He’s happy Serena’s alive too, even if there might be some other terrible side of her story. But Dean takes every case to heart in a way Sam can’t, like he considers every life saved and lost an objective mark of his own personal worth. It’s something Sam thinks their dad encourages, and it’s yet another reason he has to escape. He can’t stand and watch Dad help Dean pull himself inside-out. 

But hell if it doesn’t feel like Sam’s gonna be betraying Dean, and hell if he won’t miss the wild, blooming joy that sometimes crosses Dean’s face. 

“So while you were getting your rocks off in the library, I learned something useful,” says Dean, slinging his arm over Sam’s shoulder. “One of our dead guys, Hector, was in a band. Maybe that’s where our singing comes in.” 

“Sure, could be,” says Sam, leaning into Dean and letting the mockery slide this time. “We’ll check it out.”

x

Dean punches Sam in the shoulder when they get back to the apartment. 

“We should celebrate!” 

Sam swats at him and raises his eyebrows, but it’s more show than anything else. “Celebrate? Celebrate what, Dean? We haven’t solved the case.” 

“I think the fact that little girl not being dead is worth celebrating, huh?” 

Sam smiles faintly. “Even though we have no idea why.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” says Dean assuredly. He walks over to the refrigerator and pulls out a couple beers, uncaps them smoothly with the ring on his finger.

Sam watches him with a twinge of envy at how fucking _cool_ Dean is. “Do you want to go to the lake? After it gets dark?”

Dean gives him a curious look. “What, like a stake-out?” 

“Nah,” says Sam, dropping onto the couch. Dean walks over and hands him the beer, then sits on the futon. It’s too hot to sit close together, and Sam presses the cold beer against his face for a moment, lets out a small hum of relief. “We’re too far south for whatever it is we’re hunting. We should just go for a swim. I heard the Point’s pretty cool after dark.” 

“The Point?” Dean laughs. “What the fuck is the Point?” 

“It’s that little, you know, it’s that place just north of the 57th Street Beach. Eleni told me about it.”

“Eleni?” says Dean, looking confused. 

“Our neighbor? Brunette? Stayed over the other night?” 

“Ooh.” Dean puts his feet up on the coffee table and smirks. “ _Eleni._ ” He pauses and gives Sam a considering glance. “What the hell were you talking to Eleni for?” 

“I ran into her at the library,” says Sam. His stomach clenches and he looks away. He can feel his cheeks heat up with a blush.

Dean howls with laughter. “Sammy, you sly dog!” he cackles. “No wonder you sounded so bitchy when I called you.” 

Sam throws the couch pillow at him. “Shut up! We didn’t do anything!” 

Dean catches the pillow easily and keeps it tucked against his side, well out of reach so Sam can’t throw it at him again. “No, but I bet you’d like to. Let me tell you something about Eleni. She –”

“I don’t want to hear it,” says Sam quickly. “I don’t want to hear it!” 

Dean snorts but relents. “All right. Just make sure you’re safe and use protection.” 

“I hate you,” says Sam firmly. “And answer my question.” 

“Your question?”

“Christ, Dean. About swimming?” 

Dean shrugs. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Sure.” He smirks again. “Illegal though, isn’t it? Your balls finally drop, Sam?” 

Sam rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “The cops don’t care about a couple college kids swimming in the lake after dark. Worst they’ll do is tell us to get out of the water.” 

“We’re not college kids, smartass.” 

“Yeah and the cops won’t know that, will they, dumbass?” 

Dean sips his beer, looking pleased. “If we do get caught, I’ll tell Dad it’s your fault.” 

“No, you won’t,” laughs Sam. 

“Only because I’m such a good big brother.” 

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude.” 

Dean snorts. “Finish your beer. We’re going to the lake.” 

Sam finishes his beer slowly, and then changes his pants for running shorts, but Dean stays in his jeans.

“You’re gonna chafe,” Sam points out on the walk to the lake. They have to walk across the grassy field outside the Museum of Science and Industry, Grecian and grand in the hot night, and then through an underpass beneath Lake Shore to get to the Point.

“Who said I was gonna keep these on?” says Dean. 

There are fireflies flying in lazy loops all the way there, making fat gold circles. Sam grins; it reminds him of a summer they spent in Georgia, investigating a haunting in one of the wooded suburbs outside Atlanta. He and Dean would walk through the tall trees at night and stumble upon meadows filled with sparkling light. Dean even managed to catch one of the bugs in a jar once, and Sam had felt that familiar chest-twisting sensation of awe and envy he so often got around his brother.

The lake is calm and opaque when they get there. All along the beach Sam can hear the soft calls and laughter of other late night swimmers, but no one's too loud lest they attract the attention of the cops. He and Dean step carefully down the rocks to where the water murmurs against the shore. It's rocky at the Point, no smooth sandy slope like they would find a few blocks south at the 57th St. Beach. But Sam likes it; it gives things a feeling of quiet isolation that's almost impossible to find in the city. 

Dean gestures at a particularly flat rock that pokes out just a few inches above the water to use as a stepping stone into the water, and Sam nods and takes his shoes off. He places them on one of the stepped rocks behind him and treads carefully to the rock Dean indicated. He toes at the water and finds it pleasantly cool, the deep, sweet cool of water in summer. He gets in slowly, feeling around for sharper rocks, and his feet slip against algae. 

He's up to his chest by the time he gets completely in the water, and he doggy paddles forward a few yards. It's not long until his feet don't touch the ground at all. 

"How's the water?" Dean calls.

Sam turns and treads water a bit. "Nice!" he calls back. "You gonna come in or what?" 

Dean's grin is bright, and he shucks his pants and shoes quickly and joins Sam in the lake. 

Sam can see downtown lit up yellow and white, the ferris wheel at Navy Pier visible even from here. 

"It's Wednesday, right?" asks Sam.

"Yeah," says Dean. "Why?" 

Sam splashes some water, grinning broadly. "Navy Pier shoots off fireworks on Wednesdays. Think we're in time?"

Dean straightens up from his floating and treads water with Sam. "Damn. I hope so."

They splash each other for a while, and they don’t have to wait long. The first firework goes off after another fifteen minutes, a blue and purple flower that bursts above the pier.

From this distance, the fireworks are low to the horizon, sending out shimmering arms, and they make a faint popping noise that takes a very long time to reach them. He feels happy. And he feels at peace.

Faintly, Sam thinks he also hears singing.

  


\-----

Sam’s all loose limbs and smiles when they get back to the apartment, and he even sits on the floor in front of the futon and watches cable access news with Dean for a while. They keep the volume pitched just below their own voices, and Dean listens dreamily as Sam talks about kelpies, water-spirits that take the shape of horses and drag people to their deaths.

“Think we could be dealing with one of those?” asks Dean. He pillows his head on his arms and watches Sam’s animated face.

“I don’t know,” says Sam slowly. He looks distracted for a moment, as if he’s hearing something far away. “Probably not. It wouldn’t explain the singing.” 

“How do we know for sure the singing actually happened? We only got one witness.” 

“Yeah, one witness who says there was singing, and no witnesses who said anything about horses.”

Dean huffs. “Fair enough.” 

Sam reaches up and flicks his elbow. “We can go through what it could be tomorrow,” he says decisively. Dean tries to protest, but he feels heavy and soft with sleep, and it’s so hard to get any damn rest when it’s this fucking hot out. It’s been a long-ass fucking day too. He lets Sam get up and slip into his room, turning the news off as he goes. 

Dean wakes up again a couple hours later. At first he blames it on the heat, but then he hears Sam’s muffled tread. Sam’s probably just getting up to use the bathroom, he thinks, and he presses his face deeper into the futon. Maybe he’ll suffocate, he thinks without much hope. He dried off from the lake a while ago, and now his whole body feels damp and sticky with sweat instead. The heat’s unbearable. And now Sam’s woken him up, gonna make it damn near impossible to slip back into a decent unconsciousness. Fucking Sam.

The door out the back clicks open then, and Dean doesn’t hear it close. Sam must be trying to cool down on the fire escape or maybe trying to get a breeze going through the apartment. 

He tries to go back to sleep, but after a few minutes flopping back and forth, side to side, stomach to back, realizes Sam’s got the better idea. He gets up, walks to the fire escape. 

And Sam’s not there. He looks around and sees that the gate that leads to the back is slightly ajar. Whoever walked through it last didn’t bother to make sure it was closed.

A low worry starts to hum through Dean. Maybe Sam’s hooking up with Eleni, says a reasonable voice in his head. But the unreasonable part of him, the part that knows Sam’s just a fragile sack of bones and blood always a few inches away from something terrible, knows better. Knows Sam would have closed the damn door, that Sam’s the reason the back gate is open.

“Sam!” he yells, hoping for a response. “ _Sammy_!” 

His voice rings out in the alleyway, and there’s no response. Distantly, he hears sirens, and he knows they’re not for Sam, but they only tighten the screws on the anxiety building in his chest.

He rushes inside and finds the cheap cell phone Dad gave him when he dropped them off in Chicago. He tries calling Sam, and hears Sam’s cell go off in the bedroom. He curses and dresses quickly, then finds his gun before dashing out again into the humid night. 

Sam’s nowhere to be seen. 

He starts to jog, in the direction of the lake. There’s no real reason for that direction, just some older brother sense that Sam likes the lake, that it’s where Sam would be likely to go. 

Once he gets to the underpass, he starts to hear singing. 

It sounds like more than one singer. There's definitely a woman, maybe more than one, and beneath the sweet, high sound there's a man's deeper timbre. 

The sound staggers him for a moment. It's nothing like what he'd listen to on his own, but there's an irresistible pull to it, the sweetest shimmering hook a record exec could want, the kind of thing you find yourself whistling while your mind is elsewhere. It's like if someone turned a riptide into a song, and it’s in no language Dean can recognize 

It's exactly the tune Sam hummed for him. 

Dean swallows hard, and he keeps running. 

He spots Sam as he crests the small upward slope that leads to the lake. 

Sam's sitting down at the rocks, bent over and his legs in the water. The dark, sleek head and pale shoulders of a woman are rising out of the lake, less than a yard from Sam. She extends her hand.

Dean dashes down, shouting Sam’s name with full-throated terror, but Sam gives no indication of hearing him. Sam lifts his hand.

Dean gets to the water’s edge, and suddenly, Sam falls violently into the water, as if he were tugged. His head disappears. The woman disappears, too, before Dean can get a good look at her.

Dean shouts and shoots into the water desperately, not at Sam, but near him, and hopes it’s enough to scare the fucker off. It must work, because Sam bobs to the surface for a moment and the water around him turns less violent. Dean kicks off his boots and tosses his gun to the ground. He dives into the water. 

Sam’s standing when Dean finally gets to him, blinking cow-eyed and stupid, and Dean says a silent thanks to the universe that the water here is shallow, that whoever that bitch was, she didn’t have time to drag Sam to where it’s truly deep. 

“Sammy,” he says, shaking his brother. The water ripples and splashes as _something_ swims away, and he hears high peals of laughter. Sam’s a heavy weight against him; Dean pulls his brother to shore, thankful at least that Sam isn’t fighting him. 

Sam doesn’t come back to himself until Dean’s half-dragging him up the stairs to their apartment. He shudders suddenly and jerks away, and Dean has to grab his arm before the idiot flails down the stairs or something equally stupid. 

“Jesus, Sam, calm down,” he snaps.

Sam stares at him. “Dean?” 

“Yeah, it’s me,” growls Dean. His heart slows down a bit. He shoves at Sam. “Keep walking, Sammy.” 

Sam keeps walking. 

“I heard singing,” he says, and he still sounds a little dazed. 

“Yeah, I know,” says Dean. “I heard it, too.” He keeps one arm on Sam and quickly opens the apartment door, then drags his brother inside. 

Sam blinks at him. His eyes are wide and clear. It's chilling to Dean. Sam's always _thinking_. There's always some bright thought sparking behind his eyes, but he looks like he's been concussed, with the same dullness that comes from having your head smacked into the ground at a high velocity. 

Dean shuts the door behind them and presses Sam into the wall. 

"Jesus, Sam, dude, talk to me." 

Sam lets in a soft breath, and his voice is a little sharper, a little more _Sam_ , when he says, "Dean? Dean, I'm okay." 

Dean presses his face into Sam's shoulder for a moment. Sam's taller than him now, even if it's just by an inch or two, and Dean's never been more aware of that fact than now, while he’s trying to cover Sam's body with his own. It's not a hug, not really. It's Dean making sure Sam is all there. Sam's hands come up awkwardly to rest on Dean's back. And that's the bitch of it, Sam's the one who almost drowned but Dean's the one who needs comforting.

"What kind of singing?" he asks, even though he heard it too. He needs to get Sam to talk to him.

"Just, singing," says Sam, a little helplessly. "Women’s voices. Maybe one man? I couldn't understand what they were singing, but it felt like..." His voice lapses.

"Felt like what?" presses Dean. 

Sam shrugs. "Like if I followed them I'd be happy." He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back. "I don't know, Dean. It's hard to describe." 

Dean steps back and holds Sam's face for a second, assured for the most part that Sam's come back all in one piece. Sam startles and opens his eyes when Dean touches his face. 

"What are you doing?" he says, looking briefly embarrassed. 

"You're such a fucking loser," says Dean. "And I'm gonna rip those bitches' throats out." 

Sam shudders and breathes in deeply. "I bet you say that to all the girls," he deadpans. 

Dean laughs, just short of hysterical, and tugs on Sam’s curls. “Speaking of,” he says, trying for light and easy, like he’s not strung out on adrenaline and fear and need, “what the fuck did that bitch say to you?”

Sam stares at him. “Who?”

“The fucking thing that pulled you into the water!” snaps Dean, panic thumping through his chest again. “Looked like a woman!” 

“I don’t remember,” says Sam helplessly. “Dean, all I remember is hearing the singing and then you dragging me out of the lake.” 

Dean gapes at him, fingers still in Sam’s hair. “Are you fucking serious?” 

Sam reddens slightly. 

“No, I’m lying, Dean. I think it’s funny to joke about murderous lake women.”

“Shut up!” snaps Dean, pressing Sam further into the wall, because fuck, Sam could have died. “ _Shut up_.” 

He can feel Sam’s heart beating against his own chest, and he closes his eyes for a moment, concentrates on that. He knows he’s showing more emotion than he should, more than Sam should have to take, and that by all rights Sam will mock him for his melodrama for the rest of their lives.

But Sam just laughs nervously. 

“Jesus, Dean,” he says. “I’m all right.” He tugs Dean’s face up and Dean opens his eyes and they look at each other. Sam’s eyes and the corners of his mouth are sharp with a concern that mirrors Dean’s. 

Dean kisses him. 

He does it impulsively, and Sam kisses back seemingly on instinct. It’s hot and brief, damp from lake water and sweat. But it’s definitely a kiss, no way Dean can play it off. They both jerk away like they’ve been shocked, and Sam’s eyes are two bright coins. 

Sam pulls away more and squelches into the kitchen, his whole body a tight line of tension. 

Dean follows, feeling a bit at a loss. He wasn't ready to let go of Sam. 

"I'm going to make some coffee," announces Sam, too loud int he small kitchen. "You want any?" 

"Sure," says Dean. He leans in the doorway and watches Sam pull out coffee grounds from the freezer. He insists they last longer that way, and ignores Dean when he points out their coffee never lasts long _because they drink it too quickly_. Some fierce and ugly longing twists at Dean's gut. He almost let Sam die tonight.

"Whatever that thing is, she's dead by tomorrow," he says. His mouth feels tender. He rubs at his lower lip. 

Sam glances at him, and his eyes catch on the movement of Dean’s hand. On Dean’s mouth. They both turn red, and Sam looks away quickly. 

"We don't even know what she is Dean. We don't even know if there’s just one of her or more. And signs are kinda pointing towards _more_ right now."

"I got a couple leads." 

"Yeah?" says Sam, putting in a filter. "Care to share any of them? Cuz it seems to me like our best lead is still the Little Mermaid."

Neither of them bring up the kiss. There’s nothing to say, nothing that wouldn’t break Dean open.

\-----

Sam goes back to Bryn Mawr the next day. He needs to be away from Dean, and he figures he can look into Hector Jimenez’s band while Dean follows up on whatever leads he has.

Sam almost drowned last night, and the knowledge hangs over him. He’s thought a lot about dying, ever since he found out what happened to Mom. And he’s got a mental catalog of all the different ways he might die, of what they might feel like. But other than a run-in with a black dog last summer that left a long scar up his back, he’s never come that close before last night. 

Drowning would be an ugly way to go, but, he thinks, with morbid humor, metaphorically apt. He doesn’t remember much from what happened. He definitely doesn’t remember leaving the apartment or wading into the lake, just a sweet sound and a keen sense of _yearning_ , of being _thisclose_ to comfort. 

And then he remembers Dean yelling his name, and dragging him to shore. 

He remembers the girl, too. He hadn’t, when Dean brought her up, but that morning he woke up with her image sharp in his mind, sharper even than the memory of Dean kissing him. He woke up with her image and the sick need to talk to her again.

He doesn’t remember much about her, just the light gleaming off her black hair, the redness of her mouth and the sharpness of her teeth as she spoke, the sweetness of her mouth. She said something, and he keeps trying to recall it. He thinks maybe if he went back to the lake, he would remember, or she would talk to him again, and it would lift all the ugly longing that lives in his chest – his anxiety over Stanford, the way he loves and loathes his father, his hatred for this life and his fear for his family, and Dean. Dean who he wants to be and who he wants to be near and who he needs to be far away from and who he simply wants, in whatever measure he can have.

His mind circles finally to the fact that Dean kissed him and then immediately jumps away. It’s not something he’s ever let himself want before, not explicitly. But Dean – Dean in _that_ way – has always occupied the hazy periphery of Sam’s psyche. He wants Dean in a way that’s innate but he’s never been able to face that fact head-on, has always edged around it with excuses about the unusualness of their childhood, the closeness of their quarters, that he’s a teenager and when you’re a teenager you want to fuck everything. 

He never, ever thought Dean might’ve grown up twisted in the same way.

It’s a long ride back to Bryn Mawr, but he gets lucky when he gets there. After ten minutes wandering the neighborhood, feeling increasingly guilty that he’s used research as an excuse to not have to see Dean, he spots a flyer for “The Hector Jimenez Memorial Concert.” 

He finds the bar where the show’s going to be, and it’s too early for the concert, but he figures it’s worth talking to the bartender anyway. Early in the afternoon, there’s only a couple people around, and they all seem to be eating rather than drinking.

“Is this where the memorial concert’s going to be?” Sam asks the bartender as he takes a stool. “For –”

“For Hector?” says the bartender. He’s a young guy, maybe just a year or two older than Dean, with long black hair. He barely looks at the fake ID Sam shows him. “Yeah! Did you know him?”

“Not really,” says Sam carefully. “I’m a student and I’m doing a piece on all the drowning deaths this summer. It seems like there’s been a lot of them. Did you know Hector?”

“Dude, it’s our band playing tonight,” says the bartender. He sticks his hand out and Sam shakes it. “I’m Tyler. I play the bass, and I’ll fucking tell you something, Hector didn’t kill himself.” 

“I don’t think the coroner said he killed himself,” says Sam. “Didn’t the cops figure he’d just gone swimming at night and got unlucky?”

“Yeah, but he hadn’t been drinking,” insists Tyler. “It just doesn’t feel right, you know?” He raises his eyebrows at Sam. “You gonna write this down?”

“Oh, right.” Sam makes a show of digging out his notebook and a pen. “So you think Hector was…”

Tyler taps the side of his nose. “I think foul play was involved, dude.”

Sam raises his eyebrows. “You think someone killed him? Who?”

“You should find Hector’s girl,” says Tyler. He looks around the bar carefully, as if he’s afraid one of the few other afternoon drinkers might be spies.

“His girl?” Sam feels an uneasy stir of jealousy, and he stamps down on it. He’s under some kind of weird mermaid thrall, he reminds himself. And he knows he should tell Dean that it’s affecting him this badly, but there’s an ocean between intellectually knowing something and being willing to admit it to his older brother.

“Yeah dude, he met a girl right before…” Tyler trails off. “But like, we kept asking, and he wouldn’t bring her around. Even though he was fucking nuts about her.”

“He ever say anything about her? Like where she lived?” 

Tyler shrugs. “We were close, dude. Hector – he was like my brother, right? But all he told me was that he met her after a gig one night. By the lake.” He grins softly. “And that she was a fucking great singer. And like Hector, he was our vocalist, dude. Voice like a fucking angel. Told him he should bring her by sometime. We could use some female vocals.” 

“But he never did.” 

“Nah, man. I think she’s probably involved in like drug dealing or some kind of dangerous shit and maybe got Hector involved.” Tyler looks off into the distance, unfocused. “Fucking sucks, man. Hector was amazing. Not just talented, you know? But ambitious. He was gonna make it. He was supposed to make it.”

Sam nods, feeling guilty that he knows exactly what killed Hector, and even if he can’t quite piece together why, he could definitely give Tyler at least some kind of peace. But it’s a peace that would only make things worse for him in the long run. 

He jots down a few more things in his notebook and then closes it and gets off the bar stool. 

“Thanks, Tyler. I’m really sorry about Hector. I’ll be back later for the concert.”

Sam doesn’t stick around. He gets back on the El and digs his nails into his arm the entire ride back to Hyde Park, makes himself think about the pain rather than how much he wants to go to the lake. 

“Why me?” he remembers asking the mermaid, before Dean showed up. 

She smiled at him, sweet despite the sharpness of her teeth. 

“Because hunger calls to hunger.”

x

The apartment’s empty when he gets back. By the light outside, it’s late afternoon, which means it’s probably really something like 6 or 7, not afternoon at all. He wonders if Dean’s following up on a lead. He gets himself a glass of water, and then he hears a woman yell. 

He pauses. There are always strange noises drifting in, and they’re usually innocuous. But this sounds close, and Sam knows the sound of fear when he hears it. 

She yells again, and recognition clicks in Sam’s mind. It’s _Eleni_. He sets his glass down and grabs the knife he and Dean keep in the cupboard with the plates. He dashes out onto the fire escape and covers the distance to Eleni’s door in two long strides. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” yells Eleni, voice clear now. “Get the fuck away from me!” 

Sam jerks open the door, and is momentary awash with relief that it’s unlocked. “Eleni?” he yells. He can feel his heart beating in his throat. “Eleni, are you okay?” 

“Help!” shrieks Eleni. He hears a male voice growl something, and Sam runs towards the voices. 

And then he stops. 

“ _Dean?_ ”

Dean and Eleni are standing about four feet apart, and there’s a knocked over mug of tea on the coffee table between them. Dean doesn’t look like he has a weapon in his hands, so Sam hastily hides his own knife behind his back. 

Eleni’s face is flushed angrily, but she doesn’t look hurt. Her eyes widen when she sees Sam, and he can’t tell if she looks relieved or just more scared. 

“What the hell are you doing, Dean?” Sam yells. His voices pitches high, goes strangled. 

“I was just asking her a couple questions!” snaps Dean. He keeps his eyes on Eleni, and he’s balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, ready for a fight. 

“You’re _insane_!” spits Eleni. She looks at Sam. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

“He’s…” Sam stares between them helplessly. He grabs Dean’s shoulder. “I don’t know,” he says apologetically to Eleni. “I’m sorry,” he pulls Dean roughly, and Dean, thankfully, goes with him.

Eleni doesn’t say anything in response. She just watches them, pale and trembling, her hands balled into fists, until Sam gets Dean out of her apartment and closes the door behind them. 

"What the fuck is your problem?" he explodes once they're back in their apartment. He shoves Dean hard, and catches Dean off guard enough to send him into the wall. 

Dean catches himself quickly and snarls. "She was fucking suspicious! She was always fucking lurking-"

"Lurking?" yells Sam. He shoves Dean again, willing Dean to fight back, to hit him back. "She lives right next to us, Dean!" 

Dean shoves back this time, and Sam's shoulders hit the wall. "Don't be fucking naive, Sammy!" 

"I'm not fucking naive! You're fucking _wrong_!" 

The front hallway's too narrow to get into it properly, but Sam raises his arm all the same and tries to punch Dean in the face. There's something ugly and spoiled flooding his stomach. He needs to get his hands on Dean, make him understand how fucking out of bounds he was. Dean grabs his wrist, always more in tune with his own body than Sam is, doesn't quite have the same disconnect between thought and action. 

Dean slams Sam's hand above his head, and surges forward with his whole body and pins Sam completely. 

"Let go of me!" hisses Sam. He tries to shove Dean off with his free hand, but there's no space for leverage. The immediate wave of anger begins to leak out of him, and he's starting to feel shaky. He needs to collect himself. 

Dean doesn't say anything and he doesn't let go. He just stares at Sam with eyes that are hot and dark, his face that flat, stony expression Dean wears when he's at his most emotional, his most vulnerable. Sam takes a deep breath, suddenly aware of how he and Dean are touching almost everywhere - one of Dean's legs between Sam's thighs, Dean's chest against his, his hand still wrapped firmly around Sam's wrist. 

"Come on, Dean," he says, forcing his voice calmer. "It's too hot to do this right now." 

Dean kisses him, and the tension between them snaps. Sam gasps, and Dean takes it as an opportunity to kiss him more deeply. It's a fierce, ugly kiss. And Sam thought - Sam thought that wasn't going to happen again; he had consigned it to some surreal co-madness, the heat, the isolation, the way truly hot summer nights don't ever seem quite real. 

But Dean's kissing him now, with the yellow mid-afternoon-seeming light throwing their shadows on the wall and the sound of people chatting in the alleyway, their voices drifting up. 

Sam kisses back, and Dean makes an explosive, hissing noise and sags against Sam in relief. Dean's hands haven't moved, one's still pressing Sam's wrist to the wall, and the other is still pinning his shoulder. But he lets go, and his hands move carefully down to Sam's waist. In the three-digit heat, Sam shivers. 

"Fuck, Jesus, Dean," he whines, and he's not sure what he wants. He just wants, the color and shape of it too muddled and large and close to him that he can't pull it away and examine it critically, figure out what this thing is that lives in his chest and keens for his brother. But this seems inevitable, he thinks, as Dean kisses the hollow of his throat. Sam's grown wrong, grown slanted. The way plants will twist themselves towards the light as they grow, so Sam's grown towards Dean. 

He's not going to California just to get away from Dean. But it's certainly a benefit. 

He drags Dean's face up and kisses him hard.

Dean groans, and his nails dig into Sam's skin. Sam hisses and tilts his head back, a comet of pleasure-pain streaking across his mind. Dean laughs low in chest. It's a rumbling, soothing noise that anchors Sam to here, to Dean. He pulls away just enough to pull his shirt off. Dean slips from view for a split-second as Sam pulls his shirt up over his face, and when Sam sees him again, Dean's staring at him like a drowning man looks at dry land. He touches Sam again, fingers traveling a slow road up Sam's stomach and chest. Sam shivers. He grabs Dean's wrist and kisses Dean again, fierce and challenging. He doesn't like the reverence in Dean's touch. Doing this with his brother shouldn't feel like that. 

Dean breaks Sam's grip and grabs his hips, pulls Sam flush against him. Sam whines automatically, and flushes immediately. Dean laughs again, but there's a bit of a leer to it this time, and he rolls his hips against Sam's. It's a move that sends light crackling across Sam's vision. 

"Jesus," he gasps, and he bites Dean's neck. 

Dean swears in response, and his hand comes up and grabs Sam's hair tightly. For a second, it's almost like they're just fighting. Just two brothers, scratching and tearing and pulling at each other until one of them breaks or they swear to a truce. Then Dean palms Sam's cock with his other hand, and Sam yelps and jerks. 

Dean laughs loudly. "Easy, tiger," he says, his lips curved in a smirk. His pupils are as wide as if it were full night far from the city, and Sam almost shivers to see himself reflected in them. 

"You're a fucking asshole," he says heatedly, and he shoves Dean towards the living room. 

Dean laughs again and lets Sam push him. Sam follows in step. Grabbing at each other, they trip their way to the futon. Dean never made it up from the night before, and Sam's half-afraid in the back of his mind that it will break when they fall on it together. It doesn't. It creaks, but holds steady, and then Dean's mouth is a hot brand on Sam's neck, his collarbone, down his chest and stomach, and to his hipbone, where Dean bites hard enough to send Sam spasming upwards, hard enough that Sam knows he'll find a mark there the next morning, some purple-red bruise to remind him what they're doing. He shoves at Dean's head. 

"You got any plans while you're down there?" he says. He’s still fucking mad about the stunt Dean pulled with Eleni, he tells himself, and tries to keep his stomach from clenching when Dean laughs low and scalding. 

"Maybe," says Dean, looking up at Sam through his stupid-long eyelashes. "You ever gotten a blowjob before?"

Sam moans before he can stop himself. 

"Why?" he manages as soon as he can. "Have you _given_ any?"

In response, Dean mouths at Sam, and Sam swears and nearly twists himself right off the futon. It's fucking embarrassing that just having a _mouth_ near his cock, through his jeans and boxers, is enough to make his mind shut down for a second. 

“Take that as a no,” says Dean, and he unzips Sam’s pants. Sam groans and covers his eyes with his hands. It’s almost too much, seeing Dean’s wicked leer, and _God_ , Dean hasn’t even touched him yet. Dean lifts Sam’s legs up and pulls them over his shoulders. He feels Dean pull his cock out of his boxers and he has to bite his hand to keep from yelling. Dean mouths at the head of Sam’s cock, and Sam jerks again. 

He chances a look down and immediately has to close his eyes.

“I’m still pissed about that fucking shit you just pulled,” Sam hisses. His whole body has tensed. “Seriously, Dean. What the fuck were you thinking?” 

In response, Dean licks along the length of Sam, and Sam yelps and pulls at his own hair. He’s shaking badly, trying to keep himself from moving too much, from rutting desperate and blind into Dean’s mouth. Dean pins Sam’s hips down, doing Sam’s job for him. The heel of Dean’s palm presses sharply against the bruise he left on Sam’s hipbones. Sam gasps and whines. He lets go of his hair and reaches down and grabs Dean’s instead. Dean’s hair is soft and a bit slick from hair gel and sweat, and Sam concentrates on the feel of it as a way to keep himself from floating away, from losing control entirely. 

Dean takes Sam into his mouth completely, and Sam feels the head of his dick press, for the briefest of seconds, against the back of Dean’s throat. He sobs, wordless and overwhelmed and arches. His heels dig into Dean’s back, and Dean groans. The noise reverberates through Sam, and it’s nearly enough to send Sam over the edge. 

He bites his lip almost hard enough to break the skin and gasps, “No. No, not yet. _Dean_.” 

His voice cracks around his brother’s name, and Dean pulls off quickly. His mouth blooms red and wet. Sam shudders.

“No?” says Dean, voice raw. 

Sam shakes his head. “Not yet, I need…” He’s fumbling for words, and it’s a weird, new sensation. He’s always had words, words to attack and words to defend with, quick words and cutting words and brilliant words. But he’s lost them now, laid out bare and vulnerable in front of Dean. 

“What do you need?” asks Dean. He straddles Sam and leans over him, and Sam rocks his hips up without thinking. 

“I don’t want it over that quickly,” he admits, finally. His cheeks flame. 

Dean just smiles at him. 

“Fucking eighteen-year-old,” he mutters, bending down to kiss Sam. “Got no stamina.”

Sam snorts, the embarrassment ebbing some, and slides his hands under Dean’s shirt. He traces his nails up Dean’s back and gets rewarded with a soft shudder from Dean. He kisses Dean’s neck and tastes the summer – sweat and fresh air, and he’s starting to forget just how angry he was at Dean, that this started as a fight. 

The futon squeaks beneath them and Sam laughs. 

“What?” growls Dean, kissing his collarbone. Sam squirms under him, breathless and flushed. He still hasn’t recovered from the blowjob. 

“Nothing,” he laughs. He pulls Dean’s face up and kisses him. “Jesus, nothing.” 

Dean huffs and bites his mouth gently. His thigh is between Sam’s legs, and Sam bucks up against it. Dean groans and bites Sam’s mouth harder. His short, blunt nails catch at Sam’s skin. 

Sam tugs at Dean’s shirt and rucks it up. Dean grins and pulls away. 

“Patience,” he tsks, but he pulls it off, and Sam takes in the expanse of his bare skin. He leans up and bites Dean’s shoulder sharply, leaves a mark to match the one Dean left on his hip.

They’ll be thinking of each other for the rest of the week, whether they want to or not. Dean hisses and his body shakes with pleasure. Sam kisses the spot he’s bruised and then he grabs desperately at Dean’s crotch. 

Dean hisses, “ _Easy_ ,” at him, and pulls away just enough to help Sam get a hand on Dean’s zipper and pull it down. He palms Dean through his boxers, and Dean moans the way Sam’s heard him moan with girls sometimes. The sound goes straight through Sam, and his stomach clenches in pleasure. He pulls Dean out, even as his mind sends frantic signal after frantic signal that this his brother. That they shouldn’t be doing this. 

Dean holds them both in his hand and they rock into each other, their cocks sliding together in the heat of Dean’s callused palm. Sam digs his nails into Dean’s back, and it’s all he can do to just keep the rhythm going. 

“Come on, Sammy,” says Dean low and dirty against his ear. “I wanna see you come.” 

Sam laughs breathily. “That your idea of dirty talk?” 

Dean bites his earlobe and Sam moans. “Whaddya want me to do? Put you over my knee and call you baby boy?”

Sam grins, and it’s worse and it’s better that he and Dean can still talk trash-talk like usual even as they’re doing this. 

“I’d fucking murder you,” he says, vision beginning to white around the edges.

Dean grins against his neck. “Now who fucking sucks at dirty talk?” Then his voice dips low again, honey-sweet and tar-dark edge to it, “You don’t have to be so fucking stubborn all the time.” 

Dean twists his wrist and Sam nearly keens, hips bucking sharply as he loses all rhythm. Light splits his vision like a sign from fucking God, and he comes apart, coming hotly over his stomach, and he slumps, boneless and trembling. His ears roar with the force of his orgasm, and when he comes to, it’s Dean’s face he sees, swimming brightly above him. 

Sam closes his eyes and shudders. He gets his hand on Dean and tugs at him roughly. It’s an awkward angle, and Sam’s never done this to anyone but himself before. But Dean gasps and speeds up, his hips pumping desperately into Sam’s palm. 

“Fuck. You got some grip on you,” he pants. 

Sam can feel Dean coming undone by degrees. He kisses Dean dirty as he knows how, tongue and teeth and a sweet moan that makes Dean rattle. He slides his free hand up Dean’s chest and thumbs at his nipples, and that makes Dean break off the kiss and swear a blue streak like the night the Impala got a flat in Bumfuck, Idaho. 

Sam smirks.

“Oh, so you like that?” 

“Shut up,” growls Dean, but he’s red all down his face and shoulders. 

Sam laughs wickedly and kisses Dean again. Dean comes with a muffled grunt, spilling out hotly against Sam’s palm. He collapses on top of Sam, and Sam snorts and wipes his palm along Dean’s back. 

They lie still there for a moment, tangled and sweaty against each other, with the sun throwing long shadows against the floor.

And then the bliss of the orgasm ebbs out of Sam and his vision goes steady. Dean’s a hot, sticky weight, and Sam’s starting to itch. 

“It’s too hot for this,” he says. 

It’s cruel and he knows it, but without the overwhelming biological imperative of _sex_ to distract him, he panics. Dean doesn’t stop him as he goes to his room, not bolting, but quick enough for Dean to probably realize Sam’s freaking out. 

Sam throws himself face first onto the bed, his mind a staticky-roar of second thoughts. He’s not going to think about it, he tells himself firmly, and he listens to the creaking sound of the futon as Dean gets off it. For a moment, panic lives thickly in his throat, and he thinks Dean might be coming into the bedroom to _talk_. But the sound of Dean’s footsteps goes the other way, and after a moment, Sam hears the shower flick on. 

He doesn’t think the sex was some weird transference thing – that they both want the same girl, so they fucked each other, or that they want each other and so went after the same girl. Sam can like Eleni and want to be like Dean and want to be _with_ Dean all at the same time, wants as weird and numerous as creatures in the sea. He rolls onto his back and pulls his pillow over his face. 

Dean’s not long in the shower, and ten minutes later, Sam hears him slamming out the front door. He sits up, vaguely wondering if he should follow Dean and insist he not do anything stupid. But they’ve already done enough stupid for the day, and Sam doesn’t really think he can stop Dean from doing more. 

He sits back down and covers his face with his hands. Through the Vs of his fingers, he watches the light drift across his ceiling until the sky is dark, Dean a flickering flame-shape in his mind.

\-----

If you don’t want to think about something, you hunt something. If there’s nothing to hunt, you interrogate someone. And if there’s no one to interrogate, then you’re not doing your fucking job.

Dean has someone to interrogate. 

Ms. Washington looks surprised when she answers the door. She’s dressed casually, and she’s lost some of her military bearing. Grief makes some people hard, and having lost her grief, Washington’s clearly regained her softness.

“Harrison?” she says, she looks past Dean, checking for Sam. “What are you doing here? Is Peter with you?”

“He’s got a thing,” says Dean, smiling charmingly. “But I, actually, I write for one of the school papers. University of Chicago? And I was telling my editor about you and Serena, and he thought it would make a great human interest story. And we’re always trying to feature more news about people in the community. Would now be a good time?” 

Ms. Washington hesitates. “It’s late, and we’ve already talked to the press.”

“Oh, yeah, no problem,” says Dean deferentially. “I just forgot your number, and I thought I might as well stop by and see.” He gives her a warm look. “You have a nice night. Give my best to Serena.” 

Ms. Washington sighs. “Well, I suppose a few minutes wouldn’t hurt.” 

She opens the door and lets him in.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says, stepping inside. Ms. Washington gives him an odd look but nods. 

“How did your husband die?” 

“He –” Ms. Washington pauses, her mouth going tight. “Not that it’s any of your business, but he drowned.”

“Damn. So Serena’s disappearance must have been especially traumatizing for you.” 

Dean knows he’s treading the thin line of luck here, and the look on Ms. Washington’s face says he’s a small stumble away from getting thrown out. 

“Sorry, that was insensitive.” He coughs. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water?” 

“Of course,” says Ms. Washington thinly. She goes into the kitchen, and Dean walks into the living room. 

Serena is reading a book, curled up on the same couch Dean and Sam had sat on the evening before. She looks perfectly at ease with herself, as if she hadn’t just convinced her mother she’d drowned. She glances up at Dean when he walks in, and then, apparently unimpressed, returns to her book.

It reminds him of Sam, in a way. 

He sits down in the chair near the couch and looks at her. 

“What are you reading?” he asks. 

Without saying anything, she holds the book a little higher so he can read the cover. It’s an illustrated version of the Odyssey. 

Now she really reminds him of Sam.

She looks back at Dean again, mouth quirked slightly in annoyance. She has wide, dark eyes, almost liquid looking. 

“What were you doing in the lake?” he asks, trying to keep his voice pleasant. 

Serena raises her eyebrows. “I was swimming,” she says. When she opens her mouth to speak, her canines seem unusually sharp, not enough that you’d notice if you weren’t looking. But Dean’s looking.

Dean doesn’t have much time. 

“You’re not scared of the water?” he asks. “Your dad drowned.” 

Serena shakes her head. “No, he didn’t,” she tells him with the firm surety of an adolescent.

“That’s not what your mom told me.” 

“Mom’s lying. She doesn’t like-” Serena cuts herself off and glares at Dean suspiciously. “Why do you care?” 

“What doesn’t your mom like?” asks Dean. 

Serena shakes her head. 

Dean sighs. “All right,” he says. “Why were you swimming so late? Why’d you go so far?”

Serena looks down at the floor and then at him. There’s a sharp, sly look in her eyes. “I was looking for the mermaids.”

“Mermaids?” says Dean, a little dumbly. He has a burner in his pocket with Ms. Washington’s phone number already typed in. He presses dial. In the kitchen, the Washingtons’ phone rings. 

Serena nods firmly. “I was swimming a couple weeks ago, looking for my dad, and I heard them singing. But they were too far away, so I went looking for them.”

“Hello?” says Ms. Washington in the kitchen. “ _Hello_?”

Dean stares at Serena. “You know for a fact they were mermaids?” 

“ _Yeah_ ,” she says haughtily. “They looked like the one in the movie. The Little Mermaid?” 

“Even with the-” Dean gestures over his chest. “Shell bra?”

Serena giggles. “No, they were naked.” 

“Sorry about that, Harrison,” says Ms. Washington, coming back into the living room. She hands him a glass of water. “We had a wrong number.”

Dean doesn’t take the water. “What is she?” he demands, jerking his chin at Serena.

Ms. Washington’s face darkens dangerously. “Excuse me?” she says. 

“She sure as hell isn’t human,” says Dean boldly. 

“Get out,” says Ms. Washington. “ _Now_.”

Dean spots the family portrait, and it clicks for him. 

“Her dad wasn’t human either, was he?” he says, but he steps to the side. He knows better than to get between a mom and her kid. 

“It doesn’t matter what her father was! He _left_!” cries Ms. Washington. She looks like she might be about to throw the glass of water at Dean. 

“He didn’t leave!” Serena jumps to her feet, and her copy of the Odyssey drops to the floor. Her hands are clenched. “I’m going to find him!” 

“You will do no such thing. You can’t. You _won’t._ ” Ms. Washington’s jaw is tight, and Dean feels like he’s watching Dad and Sam argue. He can see the same stubborn flash in Serena’s eyes that Sam gets, that same implacable righteousness. 

“You can’t stop me! You can’t keep my skin from me!” 

“Your _what_?” demands Dean. “Keep _what_ from you?”

Both the Washingtons look at him like they’d forgotten he was there. 

“My skin,” says Serena. “I’ll show you.”

“You will not!” says Ms. Washington.

Serena glares at her, mouth pulled in a stubborn pout, and then she darts past her mother, shouting, “I know where you keep it!” 

Ms. Washington bolts after her, and Dean, after a pause, chases them both. He’s realized whatever personal and mythological drama playing out here has no bearing on his and Sam’s case, but he’s curious. And a hunter should make sure to tie up loose ends. 

He finds them in Ms. Washington’s room, squared off against each other like they’re in a duel. Serena’s holding an animal skin, her stance defiant. Ms. Washington looks defeated. Serena catches his eyes as he comes in and smiles recklessly, revealing again her slightly-too-sharp canines.

She pulls the skin over her head like a hood. In the light, her eyes seem all black, like an animal’s. Dean shivers. Then, she _pulls_ , and there, in the place of a girl, is a sleek, small seal. 

“What the _hell_?” yells Dean. 

“She’s a selkie,” says Ms. Washington, voice quiet and flat.

“I can fucking see that!” 

“I told you yesterday. I met her father when I was stationed in Fort Ord. He was a fisherman, or at least that’s what he told me. When I found out,” she trails off for a moment, lost in some memory. “It wasn’t like how it goes in the stories. I didn’t steal his skin. He gave it to me. He said it was proof he wanted to be with me. After I got out, he followed me here and we got married and had Serena.” She pauses, and when she continues, sounds on the verge of tears, “He always said he liked being near the lake. It reminded him of the sea, but it wasn’t as tempting.”

“And then what?” asks Dean.

Ms. Washington is silent for a long moment, an old grief splintering her face. She composes herself and looks at Dean steadily. “He took his seal skin out of its chest one day, and he went into the lake, and he didn’t come back.” 

Dean stares at her. “But he didn’t drown, right? He was… a seal.” 

Ms. Washington shrugs. “He’s never come back.” 

“I’m gonna find him,” vows Serena suddenly. Dean starts; he hadn’t noticed her shift back. She looks at Dean and spits fiercely, “ _I am_.” 

“I believe you,” says Dean. He looks back at Ms. Washington. “And Serena?” 

“What about her?”

“She was born like this?” 

Ms. Washington scowls at him. “Apparently it started a month ago.” 

“ _Apparently_?”

She directs her scowl back to her daughter. “I didn’t know about it until yesterday.” 

Serena at least has the grace to look a little abashed, and then she says defensively, “I was looking for the mermaids, Mama.” 

Ms. Washington manages to somehow look both deeply unimpressed and like she needs to sit down. 

“That’s no excuse.” She looks at Dean. “ _Mermaids?_ ” 

“Uh,” says Dean, and he shrugs, figuring why not. “My bro – Sam, I mean, Peter – he and I, we think they’re what’s responsible for all these drownings lately.” 

“You mean those boys on the north side?” 

Dean nods. “Though they’ve been drifting south,” he says dryly. 

Ms. Washington stares at him. “You’re not really a student, are you?”

“No, ma’am.” 

“So what are you?” 

Dean hesitates. And then he tells her. “Ma’am, my brother and I, we’re hunters.”

Ms. Washington and Serena look rapt while he gives them the bare bones speech, but it’s not lost on him that Ms. Washington puts herself between him and her daughter again. It’s not lost on her that he kills things that aren’t human for a living. 

“One last thing,” says Dean, once he’s explained himself to their satisfaction. He crouches down so he’s on eye-level with Serena. “How’s that song go? In the Little Mermaid? Under the sea?” 

Serena’s face splits in a grin, and she wails, “Everything’s better! Down where it’s wetter! Take it from meeee!” 

She’s terrible, and she sounds nothing like the singers that almost led Sam to his death. 

x

Dean gets back just as it's finally starting to get dark. Sam's not in the living room or the kitchen, so Dean checks the bedroom and finds Sam there, sprawled out on the bed, with the pillow over his face. It looks like all Sam's done since the afternoon is put his boxers back on. 

Dean's face turns suddenly red and he snaps, "Get up." 

Sam jerks with his whole body, straight into sitting and he stares at Dean, clearly startled. He grabs the pillow and holds it in front of himself like a virtuous maiden. He's not hiding anything Dean hasn't seen before, but now that Dean's seen, well. It's different now, and Dean looks away to give Sam his privacy. 

"I went back and talked to the Washingtons," says Dean to the floorboards. They should really clean the place before Dad gets back, he thinks vaguely, as if Dad would care. 

"And?" says Sam. Dean hears him move off the bed, but he doesn't look up, and soon he hears the quiet, weirdly intimate sounds of Sam getting dressed. His stomach turns over slowly. 

"The little girl's a selkie," says Dean quietly. "She got it from her dad."

" _What?_ " Sam's voice is colorful with surprise. There's a beat, and then he says. "But there's no... I've never heard of selkies _singing_. And there was more than one voice, Dean. I don't think-"

"She's not the one doing it," says Dean tightly. He looks up finally, and Sam's standing fully-dressed and open-mouthed in the middle of the bedroom. They make eye contact and they both turn red. "But she knows what is." 

"Well, Jesus, Dean, what is it?" 

Dean makes a face, and he spits the word out with disgust. " _Mermaids_." 

Sam stares at him for a long second, and then they both burst into laughter. It's too long, too loud, just this edge of hysterical. But it feels good to do it, and on some level, it makes Dean realize there's _nothing_ , really, that he and Sam can do that will make their life any more absurd. 

"So I was right," wheezes Sam, and even breathless and doubled over from laughter, he still manages the tone of smugness. "It was mermaids the whole time."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Don't celebrate too much geek boy. We still gotta gank the damn things." 

Sam straightens up and smirks at Dean. "So what? Do we need a boat?"

"Yeah, we do, and I got one." He raises his eyebrows at Sam. "You been slacking. Now take a damn shower. I gotta look up how to kill these things."

“Silver,” says Sam, rubbing at his face. “Or a crossbow.” 

Dean looks at him, and Sam shrugs, his expression tight and unhappy. “Like I said, I did research.”

“Great,” says Dean tersely. “Now go take a damn shower.”

Sam twists his mouth at him, but he does as he’s told. And Dean figures that’s it, that’s gonna be the extent they talk about what happened, him telling Sam to wash the fucking come off himself before they go and gank Ariel. 

A heavy sadness settles over him, and he listens to the water running, not letting himself think about anything in particular. Maybe he should just never think about what happened, just put it in the same box as Mom and Lawrence and baseball, things he can’t allow himself to think about because he’s not allowed to have them. 

He sits there for a long moment, and then he makes himself shake it off and goes to find the crossbow. It’s been a long time since they’ve used it. 

“So Serena’s a selkie?” says Sam, getting out of the shower just as Dean finishes getting the crossbow ready. 

“Yep,” says Dean. He doesn’t look at Sam. 

“And her mom…” 

“Human, weirdly. It was the dad.” 

“The one who disappeared?” 

Dean looks up, pointing the crossbow at Sam. “Splitsville. Good to know some things are universal.” 

“I guess,” says Sam. He sounds thoughtful.

“You guess?” 

Sam shrugs and scoops up his shoes from beneath the table and starts putting them on. “He wasn’t human, Dean. It’d be pretty hard to pretend to be human all those years, don’t you think?” 

Dean snorts, and puts the crossbow in a bag along with some rope. “He had a family. You don’t abandon your fucking family.” 

“Yeah,” says Sam, a bit dully. He pauses. “What do you think Serena will choose?” 

“What do you mean?” 

Sam shrugs and finishes lacing up his shoes. “Well she’s got a human mom and a selkie dad. Don’t you think she’ll have to make a choice someday?” 

Dean scowls, disgruntled. “Maybe. Not my problem.” He stands, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “Now come on. Ms. Washington is lending us a boat.”

x

They meet Ms. Washington at the water’s edge on 63rd Street Beach, next to a long, thin fisherman’s pier. Serena is a close, dark shape next to her. 

“Please, I wanna go with them, Mama,” she pleads, tugging at her mother’s shirt. 

Ms. Washington ignores her. “You boys know what you’re doing?” she asks. “You’re both awfully young for this.” 

“We know what we’re doing,” Dean assures her. “Been training for it our whole lives. Nothing else we’d rather be doing, isn’t that right, Sammy?”

“Speak for yourself,” grumbles Sam, but he nods at Ms. Washington all the same. “Dean’s right though. We’ve never hunted mermaids before, but we’ve hunted lots of others. Thank you for letting us borrow your boat.” 

“It’s the least I can do if you’re going to stop what’s been killing those boys,” says Ms. Washington, stepping subtly in front of Serena. “What else is it that you two hunt?” 

Dean and Sam share an uneasy glance. “Mainly just monsters,” says Dean, and then he quickly tacks on, “who kill people. We don’t hunt nothing unless it’s killed someone.” 

That isn’t, strictly speaking, true, but it makes Ms. Washington untense a bit. 

He adds, kindly, “And I’ve never heard of a selkie hurting anyone before.” 

Ms. Washington stiffens again, and Sam hisses, “ _Smooth, Dean_.”

“She’s a _person_ ,” snaps Ms. Washington, her face suddenly hard and fierce. 

“Yeah! I know!” says Dean quickly. “I was just – You know what? Forget it! We should get going while there’s still moonlight.” 

Sam snorts, the traitor. 

Ms. Washington’s mouth is still tight, but she nods. “The boat’s at the end of the pier.” 

She leads them down to the end, and there it is. It’s a small boat, with a small motor that they won’t use, and a set of oars that they will. They get in quietly, and Dean lays their bag of supplies between their feet. 

“Do you know how to row?” she asks. Her hand is gripped tightly around Serena’s shoulder; the girl looks like she’s practically vibrating to jump in with them.

“Sure do,” Dean says. “And we’ll bring the boat back to you first thing in the morning.” 

Ms. Washington nods and then unties the boat from its mooring. Sam catches the rope as she tosses it to them, and then Ms. Washington kicks the boat off into the water. They slip slowly forward, and it’s almost ridiculous how little distance they get. But Sam and Dean each pick up a set of oars, and they begin rowing. It only takes them a few minutes to get a good distance from shore. Serena and Ms. Washington wave at them, and then leave, their bodies turning to small, dark shapes that then disappear from view. 

"I gotta tie you up," says Dean, once they've been on the water for a bit. 

Sam gives him a startled look. "What? Why?" 

Dean snorts. "Because I can't have you fucking diving off into the lake."

Even in the dark, Dean can tell Sam is blushing. There's a thin moment of silence that stretches between them, and then Sam relents. 

"Fine," he says begrudgingly. For once in his life, his practicality gives way to his pride. 

"Thanks," mutters Dean. 

Sam lets out a huff of nervous laughter as Dean unwinds the rope. "Oh sure, any time."

Dean makes the knots thick and sure, and then ties the ends to the boat itself so Sam can't go plummeting off the side. 

"It's like Odysseus and the sirens," says Sam, when Dean's finished. He gives Dean a puzzled look. "What about you?"

"What about me?" says Dean. He lays out the crossbow and the arrows in arm's reach. It's been awhile since he's used one of these things.

"What if you hear them singing?"

"I won't," says Dean.

"You can't know that Dean," says Sam, a note of frustration creeping into his voice. 

"It's an educated guess, dude."

Sam scowls at him and Dean shrugs innocently. "Come on, Sam," he says. He picks up the oars and starts rowing. "Let's go fishing." 

They glide through the lake almost silently, just the faint splash of the oars, the more resonant noise of the waves against the wood. Dean starts to be able to see stars again, but the city's more striking, a long gold glimmer to the west. 

"Hear anything?" he asks, after a half hour passes. 

"No," says Sam, sounding terse. 

"Getting sore?" smirks Dean. 

" _No_ ," says Sam. "And you'll be able to hear it too, asshole. It'll just _affect_ me."

"So I was right to tie you up." 

Sam huffs. "We'll see," he says darkly, under his breath. And then he adds, now bright, "You know, if you fall into the water, I won't be able to save you." 

"I don't know," says Dean cheerfully. It’s weird how relieved he feels right now, hunting for mermaids with his tied up brother at night in a lake the size of a sea. But he can handle that; he couldn’t handle Sam never speaking to him again because they fucked up. But here they are, doing normal brother shit like plotting the other’s death. "You're pretty clever. I got faith in you, bro."

"Wow, I'm touched," deadpans Sam. Dean laughs and grins at him, definitely feeling at ease, and then Sam squirms a bit and says, voice a little odd, “So I think I figured out why the mermaids are targeting certain people.”

“Yeah?” says Dean. “I thought we already figured that out. It’s because they’re losers.” He grins lazily, though in the dark and with Sam looking out at the water, he knows the effect is lost. “Like you.” 

Sam doesn’t bother to come up with a comeback, and that’s what puts Dean on edge. Sam looks at him, expression troubled. 

“No, it’s the opposite, kind of. They were… ambitious. The three guys who drowned? They all wanted and were trying to get something a lot bigger than what they could get. Like Hector and his band, he was stuck in this shitty job, but he thought he was going to be… he wanted to be famous.” 

Dean stares at Sam, slowly processing what he’s saying. 

“And what do you want? What do you want so bad?” 

Somehow, Dean knows it isn’t him.

Sam doesn’t answer for a long moment, and then they both hear the singing. It seems louder than it did the night before, and Dean can clearly distinguish three voices. The song squeezes something hard and hidden in his heart, and he finds himself thinking, suddenly, of home, of Kansas. He remembers sitting in the kitchen looking at the illustrations in a book, the letters not yet making sense, while Mary cooked and Sam gurgled in the high-chair next to him. He's filled with an immeasurable sense of yearning.

He leans toward the music.

Then Sam makes a small, pained noise, and it jerks Dean straight out of the thrall. 

He keeps rowing, against the wind and in the direction of the song.

There are three of them. Two shaped like women and one like a man. Their bodies glimmer whitely in the water, their hair dark and twisted in thick, wet strands around their faces. They’re beautiful to look at, and the song is sweeter now, so much sweeter. A thick ache forms in Dean’s chest, and they hold their arms out to him and Sam. Their teeth are pointed and small as children’s.

Sam lets out a pained moan. He’s shaking badly and struggling against the ropes. His eyes are wide and frenzied. He’s staring at the mermaid in the center, and Dean guesses that’s the one who nearly drowned him the night before. She and her sister are nearly identical.

“Dean,” he pleads. “Let me go. Please Dean. _Please_.” 

Dean ignores Sam and the mermaids. He pulls his Walkman out of his pocket and puts on his headphones, then turns it on. Led Zeppelin blares in his ears as he sets his Walkman down. 

He can still hear the mermaids, but much more faintly now, their words supplanted as Robet Plant sings, “ _I am a traveler of both time and space._ ” 

He raises his crossbow once they’re in range, and he hears the first murmur of confusion. He shoots before they have a chance to flee, and nails the center mermaid in the shoulder. 

She shrieks in pain and her siblings shriek. Without their singing, the world seems suddenly silent, Plant gone tinny and small in Dean’s ears. 

Sam stops twitching, and he stares at Dean. 

Dean reloads. The uninjured mermaids aren’t fleeing, but instead are trying to help their sister stay afloat. Dean remembers a story he heard once, how on an island that had never known men, when the first men came, the birds swooped to them innocently, and died in droves. The birds kept dying, but that first generation never realized it was the men who were responsible.

This feels kind of like that. The mermaids have never been hunted before. They’re wild and innocent and cruel; Dean shakes himself, wonders if that’s the mermaids’ song still at work. 

He shoots again, gets the merman in the arm, and curses. His aim is off. He fires again and hits the merman again, straight through the jaw. The sight is nearly enough to make him throw up and he stops singing. He’s not used to killing things that look so human, and the way the sisters wail as their brother jerks backwards feels awful human. 

The lake is weirdly calm in contrast to the violence going on. The wind’s died to a light breeze and the boat barely rocks at all as Dean firms up his stance. Sam’s gone completely quiet, but when Dean glances at him, his brother is white, straining at the ropes. 

“Why are you doing this?” cries the middle mermaid, the one Dean got in the shoulder, the one Sam keeps staring at. Her blood darkens the water around her.

“You killed those men,” says Sam through clenched teeth. “We can’t… We can’t let you keep doing that.” 

"You don't understand!" she babbles, voice loud with pain and grief and wild fear. Dean fires again, and blood blooms in the throat of her sister. “We loved them! But they drowned!" 

Dean hefts his crossbow and takes aim. "They're still dead, you watery bitch," he snarls, and he shoots her too. She gurgles around the arrow in her throat and grips at her own neck. Blood dribbles out between her fingers. Dean's stomach feels like a stone, but he stays standing in the boat, and he watches her and her siblings thrash and bleed out. 

He understood her. He understands her too fucking well. He's been thinking since the morning after he and Sam fucked. Just because you love something, doesn't mean it's good, doesn't mean love will save you, doesn't mean love won't make you a monster. And it seems fitting to Dean that love's going to be what damns him. That he loves too much, that he loves badly, wrongly. 

Dean stands at the prow of the boat for a long time, until the mermaids bleed out completely, and then their blood and bodies turn to white foam. 

"Dean?" says Sam faintly. 

Dean turns and looks at him. Sam looks very pale and like he's trying not to cry. "Dean." Sam takes a deep, calming breath and squares his shoulders. "We done here?" 

Dean licks his lips. Slowly, he sits. 

"Yeah," he says. "All right." 

He puts the crossbow down and pulls out his headphones. Then he reaches across the boat and unties Sam gently. Sam pulls away from him in a quick, animal movement. 

"Sorry," mutters Dean. He raises his hands in a placating gesture and sits back. 

"For what?" says Sam. His mouth thins. "You did the right thing." 

"I meant for tying you..." The words die in his mouth. Sam is looking away from him, staring out across the water to where the city sits on the edge of the lake, gleaming and vaguely unreal. 

"It's weird, right?" says Sam, after a moment. "There are like three million people out there, and none of them have a clue there were _homicidal mermaids_ in the lake." 

Dean shrugs. "I guess." 

Sam breathes deep and shudders. 

“You think they meant what they said? About loving the guys they killed?” 

“Does it matter?” asks Dean. “They hypnotized some landlubbers into a lake and then ate them when they didn’t grow gills. Seems pretty fuckin’ monstrous to me.” 

“There’s just lore about sailors…” says Sam, but he trails off and looks back out to city. He shrugs. “How did they even get into the lake?” 

Dean understands the question’s rhetorical. He’s got no fucking clue and no decent guesses. Though he wonders what Dad will say when they tell him about the case. At the thought of Dad, his stomach sinks. He knows what he and Sam did was wrong, and he wonders if there’s any way he’s gonna be able to face his father after this. 

He wonders if he and Sam will ever do that again, and he thinks that they won’t. Even if they both want to – and Dean wants and doesn’t want in equal and sickening measure – there’s no way they could hide it. Dean allows himself his moment of self-pity. There are continents between what he desires and what he deserves. 

On one level, he guesses he’s relieved. That having sex with Sam won’t mean anything for them in the long term, that’ll it just become a dead end road, a memory marked Do Not Enter. He’s not one to dwell on hurt. 

Sam looks back at him, his eyes unreadable and most of his face in darkness. "But we're letting Serena go."

Dean hesitates, and then nods. He's no desire to kill a twelve-year-old kid. "Yeah, she hasn't done anything."

"She might someday," says Sam. "Selkies go feral sometimes." 

Dean shifts uncomfortably. "Well, we won't tell Dad that part. She's, she's mostly human, right? She can make a choice to be a human or... a seal or whatever." 

"Right," says Sam. "Yeah."

"Right," echoes Dean.

They sit in silence on the rocking boat. Noise travels far over the water, and Dean can still hear the distant, metal whir of the city. He can even make out the thin keening of a siren. But the siren fades fast and the other city sounds are muffled. This is the closest to true quiet he's experienced in a while. He listens to Sam’s soft breathing, to the waves lapping humming against the boat. 

“Dean,” says Sam, startling Dean. He touches Dean’s arm and gestures. Dean looks, and there, bobbing in the water, is a seal, eyes shining and wet. 

Dean stares at it. He’s starting to feel shaky from adrenaline come-down. 

“Your daughter’s looking for you,” he says finally, and the words seem over-loud. 

The seal blinks twice, as if acknowledging Dean, and then it disappears back into the water, leaving nothing more than a ripple where it was, a piece of someone else’s story. It tears at Dean sometimes, how big everything is, how little he can do for everyone, the little that he can do for the people he actually can help.

"I'm going to college," says Sam suddenly, shattering Dean’s thoughts. "Stanford gave me a full ride. I'm leaving next month." He breathes deep, and it all comes rushing out. “That’s what the mermaids were picking up on, Dean. I’m leaving. I have to leave. I _want_ to leave.”

\-----

Sam lets Dean go inside ahead of him and pauses, midway between their door and Eleni. It’s way too late to knock, but he wonders if he should try apologizing tomorrow anyway, try to explain.

But there doesn’t seem like there’s any point. She won’t want to see him, and he should be grateful she hasn’t called the cops on Dean. But even if Dean hadn’t terrorized her, he couldn’t fairly ask anything of her, not while he’s still here, under Dad’s orders and Dean’s thrall. 

Dad won’t ever let him be normal, he knows that without asking, and Dean he loves too much. 

"Stanford?" says Dean when Sam slips back inside. He's standing in the hallway, his shoulders raised high in agitation. "Really, Sam? _Stanford_?" 

It’s the first thing Dean’s said to him since Sam confessed. They rowed back to the shore in silence, and Dean said nothing the entire walk back to the apartment, even as Sam laid out reason after reason why he was doing this, why he had to this. But he doesn’t think Dean understood, couldn’t cross the insuperable gulf of need and ambition. 

Sam leans against the door and closes his eyes. "Are you objecting to Stanford in particular or college in general?" 

Dean doesn't answer, but Sam hears the creak of the floorboards as Dean walks towards him. When he opens his eyes, Dean's right in front of him. His eyes are a bit wild, a little frantic. He looks, thinks Sam, with a sickening lurch, like the last mermaid had as her siblings died around her.

"What's this about, Sam?" he demands. Sam watches Dean's throat bob as he swallows. "This about what happened..."

" _No_ ," says Sam quickly. "Jesus, Dean. I applied in December and got accepted in March. What happened had nothing to do with it." 

And that's true, mostly. Sam's known for a while he and Dean are too close, that lines were being blurred that shouldn't be, and that was extra reason to apply. But it wasn't the only or even the main reason he applied, that he’s leaving. 

Dean gives him a long, unreadable look. "That's a long time to be keeping secrets." 

Sam shrugs helplessly. "How the hell do you think Dad would've reacted? How the hell do you think he _will_ react? What choice did I have?" 

"You could choose not to leave," says Dean, and he's close, suddenly. Very close. He puts his hand on Sam's hip, and Sam shivers a little. 

"It's just college," says Sam stubbornly. "Just because I don't want to hunt doesn't mean I'm _leaving_." He says leaving, but he means abandoning, and he knows that's what Dean means, too.

Something flickers in Dean's eyes that presage arguments to come. But he doesn't say anything. He kisses Sam softly, and Sam opens his mouth and lets him.

"What are you doing?" he asks gently, after a moment. He touches Dean's stomach, partly just to touch him, but partly to keep just that much distance between them. He doesn't want Dean to do this to make him stay. 

"Shut up," says Dean. "I don't wanna think about it." 

And that's not fair, they gotta think about it. They're gonna have to talk about it. Whatever they're doing, they shouldn't be doing it, and it's not going to last. Sam's leaving. 

Dean kisses Sam's pulse point and Sam shivers again, in spite of himself. He closes his eyes and kisses Dean, hard and sweet, and for the first time in days, his head's empty of the mermaids’ song. 

All there is, is Dean.

**Author's Note:**

> I lived in Chicago for four years for college and just moved away, so this story is a little bit of a love letter to the city. I've also often wondered what strange creatures might lurk in Lake Michigan's depths. ;) Regarding the case, I have obviously taken liberties with both mermaid lore and selkie lore. Though there is a precedent for mermaids luring unsuspecting young men to watery graves, and while I never found a reputable source for man-eating mermaid mythology, I did find glimmers of such a myth. There is also a fine tradition of [singing mermaids](http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam312/prufrock.html).
> 
> Title of this fic is directly lifted from [the excellent poem](http://coyyyote.tumblr.com/post/49331464277/they-then-ate-the-sailors) of the same name by Hannah Craig, and is, indirectly, an Odyssey allusion. I believe "they then ate the sailors" is a line in reference to the sirens from, er, one of the translations.
> 
> Lastly, if you're curious about the names Dean gives Ms. Washington: [Harrison and Peter](https://www.google.com/search?q=actors+who+played+han+solo+and+chewbacca&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS512US512&oq=actors&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j69i59l2j0j69i61.4378j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8).
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and putting up with my Little Mermaid references. Comments are adored.


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